Harley essay and map reproduction: followup and posted files

Amongst the things I have learned the last few months is that crowd-sourcing campaigns, however well-intentioned, do not always result in the desired results. So, I did not get the amount needed to print the Ordnance Survey map that J.B. Harley so eloquently wrote about in his 1987 essay, "The Map as Biography." It's regrettable, but that's often how learning experiences go. I did however acquire a high-resolution scan of the map from the Library of Congress, and I offer a cleaned-up version of it to anyone interested here.

A few notes about this image: it is high resolution and bit-mapped, rather than grayscale. This may strike some as odd, as the on-screen quality of a grayscale image allows for more accurate viewing online. But this image is meant for printing, and it's my belief that a high-resolution bitmap ends up resulting in a crisper printed image. It's a difficult compromise, because the original imprint involved microscopic smudging and spreading which will probably not be duplicated on your plotter. If you would like a grayscale image, please get in touch with me, and I'll see if I can get it to you. a quick warning: the bitmap I've made available is 6.7 MB. You can view the image as a pan-and-zoom here.


I've also re-set the original essay as two 8.5 x 11 sheets, here. Thanks to Paul Laxton, Harley's literary executor, for his permission to reproduce this. I hope you will find the result of interest and will find it as rich a reading to come back to as I do.