Imago Mundi MS 1-11

Life and career

Leo (Lev Semyonovitch) Bagrow (1881-1957), independent scholar of the history of cartography, was born in Russia. After service before and during the First World War in the Russian Imperial Navy, mainly as a hydrographer, he emigrated soon after the Revolution to Berlin, remaining there until evacuated by a Swedish aircraft in 1945. Thereafter he lived in Stockholm. In 1952 he became a naturalised Swedish citizen. He died on 9 August 1957.

Obituaries can be found in Nature, vol 180, page 684, 5 Oct 1957, and Imago Mundi XIV (1959), pages 4-12 (both by Skelton; the latter includes a bibliography); and elsewhere. (See MS 15/1 and 3.) JB Harley's essay, 'Imago Mundi. The First Fifty Years and the Next Ten', Cartographica, vol 23, no 3 (1986), pages 1-15, includes an appreciation of Bagrow.

Work for Imago Mundi

Bagrow founded Imago Mundi in Berlin in 1935, and three issues had appeared by the outbreak of the Second World War. The war years suspended publication, as well as destroying almost all Bagrow's personal papers up to that date, but thereafter with great determination he resurrected Imago Mundi. Ten issues (volumes IV to XIII, dated 1956) had appeared by the time of his unexpected death in 1957. Funding came from the Swedish Humanistiska Fonden. Problems with English and proof-reading had forced him from 1947 to seek the assistance of Eila Campbell, and from 1949 that of Peter Skelton also, as English 'Corresponding Editors'.

Two weeks before his death, Bagrow had delivered the scripts for volume XIV to the printers/publishers, Mouton & Co, in The Hague. These were put through the press by his successors, Roukema and Skelton (see their papers).

Bagrow's Imago Mundi papers

Bagrow's papers start in 1946. All earlier papers except a few fragments were destroyed during the Second World War.

They contain many items in languages other than English. Bagrow's own first language was Russian, and as a general rule his wide range of international correspondents communicated with him in their own language. Occasionally Bagrow would have in-letters in other languages translated into Russian for his convenience. His secretary would also sometimes type out handwritten letters from English contacts, still in English, to make them easier for him to read. The material in foreign languages has been sorted as far as possible in the time available, but there may be errors.

There are now several gaps in his papers. First, Bagrow almost always drafted his own letters in Russian, in pen and ink, on small pieces of scrap paper, spare proofs and the like, and then had them translated and typed into English, French or German, as appropriate for the recipient. (He could be devious in his choice of language. For example, during a dispute with the German-speaking Franz Babinger, he wrote to him in English, 'because my German is insufficient'. However his true purpose was almost certainly tactical; his German was far better than his English.) Many files contain all or almost all of these handwritten drafts in Russian; others hardly any. Some drafts are therefore missing, though Bagrow did have a tendency to use one piece of scrap paper for several drafts to different people on different topics, so that drafts can be found in unlikely places.

The carbon copies of his letters as translated and sent are also incomplete. Nor are there many authors' typescripts, or printer's proofs. This is because Skelton had told Mrs Bagrow in a letter of 11 June 1959 that these were not required. In addition, some Russian letters appear to have been destroyed (see MS 27). Finally, there are few papers of a financial nature (the subsidy received from Sweden's Humanistiska Fonden is referred to only indirectly), or for Anecdota Cartographica, the series of facsimiles of early maps published by Bagrow from 1935 onwards.

Bagrow's papers have moved many times since his death. Their first move was in December 1959, when his former secretary, Mrs Busch, sent them from Stockholm to Roukema in the Netherlands. (See Skelton's correspondence with Mrs Busch, MS 14.)

Some Bagrow papers only arrived in the Netherlands after Roukema's own death in April 1960. These were returned 'undelivered' to Stockholm, and collected later in 1960 by Skelton. He also received the main part of Bagrow's papers, as well as Roukema's own papers, from Roukema's widow soon after his death.

In 1962 Skelton forwarded Bagrow's and Roukema's papers to Koeman, although he appears to have retained a few, now in Newfoundland. (See the introductory note to Skelton's papers.)

Koeman's papers, which now included those of Bagrow and Roukema, were collected from Utrecht by Peter Clark for Eila Campbell in the spring of 1976, though two Bagrow items (MSS 8 and 9) were omitted in error. The Bagrow, Roukema and Koeman papers, together with Skelton's own Imago Mundi papers, were then deposited by Eila Campbell in the British Library Map Room in 1978.

In 2005-6 Anna Greening substantially rearranged Bagrow's papers into their original order, so far as it is possible to recreate it. Stephen Freeth in 2008-10 merely continued this work. It included dismantling an attempt, made probably in the 1970s or 1980s, to merge into one single sequence all the papers of the late 1940s and 1950s of Bagrow, Skelton and Eila Campbell.