John Kirtland Wright

John Kirtland Wright (1891–1969) was an American geographer, notable for his cartography, geosophy, and study of the history of geographical thought. He was the son of classical scholar John Henry Wright and novelist Mary Tappan Wright, and the brother of legal scholar and utopian novelist Austin Tappan Wright. He married Katharine McGiffert Jan. 21, 1921 in New York, N.Y. They had three children: Austin McGiffert Wright, Gertrude Huntington McPherson, and Mary Wolcott Toynbee.

Having completed a PhD in history at Harvard University, in 1920 Wright was employed as librarian by the American Geographical Society; between the years of 1920 and 1956 he also served as an AGS editor, personal academic contributor, and eventually director. As a result of his prolific academic and professional life, three main themes have emerged in John K. Wright’s published works. These include: the overlapping of academic disciplines (mainly history) with geography, the power of the mind and the supernatural realm in creating subjectivity in geographic research, and the importance of sharing academic knowledge.

While at one point the discipline of geography ignored the influence of subjectivity in human and physical patterns, John Kirtland Wright brought to the forefront the significance of the mind and the imagination in affecting scientific research. Specifically, he stressed the duality of both the mind’s reality and of mental, often transcendental, images. Included in this arena of study were his interests in geographical cosmogony and cosmography, which pertained to the theological realm of the divine, “God’s invisible creation,” and the emotional bonds between people and places, which he then compared to the physical realm of land surface, climate, and cartography (Wright 1928).

Wright was highly interested in the history of geography and the importance of accurate geographic archival records. He discovered and documented the influences of various religious perspectives on geography, with a very keen interest in Gothic and medieval representations that signified both divine and earthly geographic beauty (Wright 1965). In addition, he wrote prolifically on the Greek and Roman geographic influences, largely pertaining to the fifteenth- century map of the world by Giovanni Leardo (Wright,AGS,1928). This was the second oldest map that was given to the AGS in 1906, dated in the 15th century. Wright’s historic and cartographic fascination was sparked by the unusual, detailed features of the map, including a calendar encompassing the center image, and by the concept it depicted of the earth’s surface before the actual discovery of America; Leardo’s known world includes Asia, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Europe. Greek and Roman sources were used for the making of the map, specifically including Greek notions that the earth existed as a flat disk. The document lacks the evocative drawings seen in many other medieval maps that were primarily used to fill blank map space (drawings mostly of animals.) Lastly, Leardo features Jerusalem as the city center (Wright, AGS, 1928). Ultimately, Wright indicates that the blurring of the fields of history and geography has much significance, as each subject relies on the other for accuracy (Wright, Henry Holt, 1928.) After retiring as director from the American Geographical Society, Wright continued his quest for historic elucidation by writing on the history of the Society and its connection to the development of geography (Light 1950).

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