title: African-American literature

text: Zilpha Elaw was born in 1790 in America to free parents. She was a preacher for five years in England without the support of a denomination. She published her "Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travel and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour" in 1846, while still living in England. Her narrative was meant to be an account of her spiritual experience. Yet some critics argue that her work was also meant to be a literary contribution. Elaw aligns herself in a literary tradition of respectable women of her time who were trying to combat the immoral literature of the time.


title: African-American literature

text: Maria W. Stewart published a collection of her religious writings with an autobiographical experience attached in 1879. The publication was called "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart". She also had two works published in 1831 and 1832 titled "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality" and "Meditations". Maria Stewart was known for her public speeches in which she talked about the role of black women and race relations. Her works were praised by Alexander Crummell and William Lloyd Garrison. Stewart's works have been argued to be a refashioning of the jeremiad tradition and focus on the specific plight of African Americans in America during the period.–


title: African-American literature

text: Jarena Lee published two religious autobiographical narratives: "The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee" and "Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee". These two narratives were published in 1836 and 1849 respectively. Both works spoke about Lee's life as a preacher for the African Methodist Church. But her narratives were not endorsed by the Methodists because a woman preaching was contrary to their church doctrine. Some critics argue that Lee's contribution to African-American literature lies in her disobedience to the patriarchal church system and her assertion of women's rights within the Methodist Church.


title: African-American literature

text: Nancy Prince was born in 1799, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was of African and Native American descent. She turned to religion at the age of 16 in an attempt to find comfort from the trials of her life. She married Nero Prince and traveled extensively in the West Indies and Russia. She became a missionary and in 1841 she tried to raise funds for missionary work in the West Indies, publishing a pamphlet entitled "The West Indies: Being a Description of the Islands, Progress of Christianity, Education, and Liberty Among the Colored Population Generally". Later, in 1850, she published "A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince". These publications were both spiritual narratives and travel narratives. Similar to Jarena Lee, Prince adhered to the standards of Christian religion by framing her unique travel narrative in a Christian perspective. Yet, her narrative poses a counter narrative to the 19th century's ideal of a demure woman who had no voice in society and little knowledge of the world.


title: African-American literature

text: Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) was a leading advocate in both the abolitionist and feminist movements in the 19th century. Born Isabella to a wealthy Dutch master in Ulster County, New York, she adopted the name Sojourner Truth after 40 years of struggle, first to attain her freedom and then to work on the mission she felt God intended for her. This new name was to "signify the new person she had become in the spirit, a traveler dedicated to speaking the Truth as God revealed it". Truth played a significant role during the Civil War. She worked tirelessly on several civil rights fronts; she recruited black troops in Michigan, helped with relief efforts for freedmen and women escaping from the South, led a successful effort to desegregate the streetcars in Washington, D.C., and she counseled President Abraham Lincoln. Truth never learned to read or write but in 1850, she worked with Olive Gilbert, a sympathetic white woman, to write the "Narrative of Sojourner Truth". This narrative was a contribution to both the slave narrative and female spiritual narratives.


title: African-American literature

text: After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of African-American authors wrote nonfiction works about the condition of African Americans in the United States. Many African-American women wrote about the principles of behavior of life during the period. African-American newspapers were a popular venue for essays, poetry and fiction as well as journalism, with newspaper writers like Jennie Carter (1830–1881) developing a large following.


title: African-American literature

text: Among the most prominent of post-slavery writers is W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), who had a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University, and was one of the original founders of the NAACP in 1910. At the turn of the century, Du Bois published a highly influential collection of essays entitled "The Souls of Black Folk". The essays on race were groundbreaking and drew from Du Bois's personal experiences to describe how African Americans lived in rural Georgia and in the larger American society. Du Bois wrote: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line", a statement since considered prescient. Du Bois believed that African Americans should, because of their common interests, work together to battle prejudice and inequity. He was a professor at Atlanta University and later at Howard University.


title: African-American literature

text: Another prominent author of this period is Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), who in many ways represented opposite views from Du Bois. Washington was an educator and the founder of the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. Among his published works are "Up From Slavery" (1901), "The Future of the American Negro" (1899), "Tuskegee and Its People" (1905), and "My Larger Education" (1911). In contrast to Du Bois, who adopted a more confrontational attitude toward ending racial strife in America, Washington believed that Blacks should first lift themselves up and prove themselves the equal of whites before asking for an end to racism. While this viewpoint was popular among some Blacks (and many whites) at the time, Washington's political views would later fall out of fashion.


title: African-American literature

text: Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911) wrote four novels, several volumes of poetry, and numerous stories, poems, essays and letters. Born to free parents in Baltimore, Maryland, Harper received an uncommonly thorough education at her uncle, William Watkins' school. In 1853, publication of Harper's "Eliza Harris", which was one of many responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin", brought her national attention. Harper was hired by the Maine Anti-Slavery Society and in the first six weeks, she managed to travel to twenty cities, giving at least thirty-one lectures. Her book "Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects", a collection of poems and essays prefaced by William Lloyd Garrison, was published in 1854 and sold more than 10,000 copies within three years. Harper was often characterized as "a noble Christian woman" and "one of the most scholarly and well-read women of her day", but she was also known as a strong advocate against slavery and the post-Civil War repressive measures against blacks.


title: African-American literature

text: Elizabeth Keckley (1818–1907) was a former slave who managed to establish a successful career as a dressmaker who catered to the Washington political elite after obtaining her freedom. However, soon after publishing "Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years as a Slave and Four Years in the White House", she lost her job and found herself reduced to doing odd jobs. Although she acknowledged the cruelties of her enslavement and her resentment towards it, Keckley chose to focus her narrative on the incidents that "moulded her character", and on how she proved herself "worth her salt". "Behind the Scenes" details Keckley's life in slavery, her work for Mary Todd Lincoln and her efforts to obtain her freedom. Keckley was also deeply committed to programs of racial improvement and protection and helped found the Home for Destitute Women and Children in Washington, D.C., as a result. In addition to this, Keckley taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio.


title: African-American literature

text: Josephine Brown (born 1839), the youngest child of abolitionist and author William Wells Brown, wrote a biography of her father, "Biography of an American Bondman, By His Daughter". Brown wrote the first ten chapters of the narrative while studying in France, as a means of satisfying her classmates' curiosity about her father. After returning to America, she discovered that the narrative of her father's life, written by him, and published a few years before, was out of print and thus produced the rest of the chapters that constitute "Biography of an American Bondman". Brown was a qualified teacher but she was also extremely active as an advocate against slavery.


title: African-American literature

text: Although not a US citizen, the Jamaican Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), was a newspaper publisher, journalist, and activist for Pan Africanism who became well known in the United States. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). He encouraged black nationalism and for people of African ancestry to look favorably upon their ancestral homeland. He wrote a number of essays published as editorials in the UNIA house organ, the "Negro World" newspaper. Some of his lecture material and other writings were compiled and published as nonfiction books by his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey as the "Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans" (1924) and "More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey" (1977).


title: African-American literature

text: Paul Laurence Dunbar, who often wrote in the rural, black dialect of the day, was the first African-American poet to gain national prominence. His first book of poetry, "Oak and Ivy", was published in 1893. Much of Dunbar's work, such as "When Malindy Sings" (1906), which includes photographs taken by the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and "Joggin' Erlong" (1906) provide revealing glimpses into the lives of rural African Americans of the day. Though Dunbar died young, he was a prolific poet, essayist, novelist (among them "The Uncalled", 1898 and "The Fanatics", 1901) and short story writer.


title: African-American literature

text: Other African-American writers also rose to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among these is Charles W. Chesnutt, a well-known short story writer, novelist, and essayist. Mary Weston Fordham published "Magnolia Leaves" in 1897, a book of poetry on religious, spiritual, and occasionally feminist themes with an introduction by Booker T. Washington.


title: African-American literature

text: The Harlem Renaissance from 1920 to 1940 was a flowering of African-American literature and art. Based in the African-American community of Harlem in New York City, it was part of a larger flowering of social thought and culture. Numerous Black artists, musicians and others produced classic works in fields from jazz to theater.


title: African-American literature

text: Among the most renowned writers of the renaissance is poet Langston Hughes, whose first work was published in "The Brownies' Book" in 1921. He first received attention in the 1922 publication "The Book of American Negro Poetry". Edited by James Weldon Johnson, this anthology featured the work of the period's most talented poets, including Claude McKay, who also published three novels, "Home to Harlem", "Banjo" and "Banana Bottom," a nonfiction book, "Harlem: Negro Metropolis", and a collection of short stories. In 1926, Hughes published a collection of poetry, "The Weary Blues", and in 1930 a novel, "Not Without Laughter". He wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" as a young teen. His single, most recognized character is Jesse B. Simple, a plainspoken, pragmatic Harlemite whose comedic observations appeared in Hughes's columns for the "Chicago Defender" and the "New York Post". "Simple Speaks His Mind" (1950) is a collection of stories about centering on Simple published in book form. Until his death in 1967, Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books of short stories, two novels and a number of plays, children's books and translations.


title: African-American literature

text: Another notable writer of the renaissance is novelist Zora Neale Hurston, author of the classic novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937). Although Hurston wrote 14 books that ranged from anthropology to short stories to novel-length fiction, her writings fell into obscurity for decades. Her work was rediscovered in the 1970s through


title: African-American literature

text: Alice Walker’s 1975 article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”, published in "Ms." and later retitled “Looking for Zora”. Walker found in Hurston a role model for all female African-American writers.


title: African-American literature

text: While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer, author of "Cane", a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural and urban Black life, and Dorothy West, whose novel "The Living is Easy" examined the life of an upper-class Black family. Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen, who in his poems described everyday black life (such as a trip he made to Baltimore that was ruined by a racial insult). Cullen's books include the poetry collections "Color" (1925), "Copper Sun" (1927), and "The Ballad of the Brown Girl" (1927). Frank Marshall Davis's poetry collections "Black Man's Verse" (1935) and "I am the American Negro" (1937), published by Black Cat Press, earned him critical acclaim. Author Wallace Thurman also made an impact with his novel "The Blacker theerry: A Novel of Negro Life" (1929), which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans.


title: African-American literature

text: The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African-American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other Black people. With the renaissance, though, African-American literature—as well as black fine art and performance art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture.


title: African-American literature

text: A large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this Great Migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities such as Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.


title: African-American literature

text: This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing Civil Rights Movement, which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings.


title: African-American literature

text: One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain", wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. In all, Baldwin wrote nearly 20 books, including such classics as "Another Country" and "The Fire Next Time".


title: African-American literature

text: Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me". Wright is best known for his novel "Native Son" (1940), which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays "Notes of a Native Son", in reference to Wright's novel. However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel," which criticized "Native Son" for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. Among Wright's other books are the autobiographical novel "Black Boy" (1945), "The Outsider" (1953), and "White Man, Listen!" (1957).


title: African-American literature

text: The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison, best known for his novel "Invisible Man" (1952), which won the National Book Award in 1953. Even though he did not complete another novel during his lifetime, "Invisible Man" was so influential that it secured his place in literary history. After Ellison's death in 1994, a second novel, "Juneteenth" (1999), was pieced together from the 2,000-plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript was published as "Three Days Before the Shooting" (2010).


title: African-American literature

text: The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most notably Gwendolyn Brooks, who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded for her 1949 book of poetry, "Annie Allen". Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the 1950s and '60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.


title: African-American literature

text: During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry, whose play "A Raisin in the Sun" focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. The play won the 1959 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka, who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka became known for his poetry and music criticism.


title: African-American literature

text: It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail".


title: African-American literature

text: Beginning in the 1970s, African-American literature reached the mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of African-American writers began to be accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature.


title: African-American literature

text: As part of the larger Black Arts Movement, which was inspired by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, African-American literature began to be defined and analyzed. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping to promote and define African-American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel.


title: African-American literature

text: James Emanuel took a major step toward defining African-American literature when he edited (with Theodore Gross) "Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America" (1968), a collection of black writings released by a major publisher. This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator at the City College of New York (where he is credited with introducing the study of African-American poetry), heavily influenced the birth of the genre. Other influential African-American anthologies of this time included "Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing", edited by LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal in 1968; "The Negro Caravan", co-edited by Sterling Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee in 1969; and "We Speak As Liberators: Young Black Poets — An Anthology", edited by Orde Coombs and published in 1970.


title: African-American literature

text: Toni Morrison, meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors in the 1960s and '70s when she worked as an editor for Random House, where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the most important African-American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, "The Bluest Eye", was published in 1970. Among her most famous novels is "Beloved", which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. This story describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to save her from a life of slavery. Another important Morrison novel is "Song of Solomon", a tale about materialism, unrequited love, and brotherhood. Morrison is the first African American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.


title: African-American literature

text: In the 1970s novelist and poet Alice Walker wrote a famous essay that brought Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God" back to the attention of the literary world. In 1982, Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel "The Color Purple". An epistolary novel (a book written in the form of letters), "The Color Purple" tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to marry a man who physically abuses her. The novel was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg.


title: African-American literature

text: The 1970s also saw African-American books by and about African-American life topping the bestseller lists. Among the first to do so was "" by Alex Haley. A fictionalized account of Haley's family history—beginning with the kidnapping of his ancestor Kunta Kinte in Gambia through his life as a slave in the United States—"Roots" won the Pulitzer Prize and became a popular television miniseries. Haley also wrote "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" in 1965.


title: African-American literature

text: Other important writers in recent years include literary fiction writers Gayl Jones, Rasheed Clark, Ishmael Reed, Jamaica Kincaid, Randall Kenan, and John Edgar Wideman. African-American poets have also garnered attention. Maya Angelou read a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration, Rita Dove won a Pulitzer Prize and served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995, and Cyrus Cassells's "Soul Make a Path through Shouting" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994. Cassells is a recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award. Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with her book "Native Guard". Lesser-known poets such as Thylias Moss also have been praised for their innovative work. Notable black playwrights include Ntozake Shange, who wrote "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" (1976), Ed Bullins, Suzan-Lori Parks, and the prolific August Wilson, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays. More recently, Edward P. Jones won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for "The Known World" (2003), his novel about a black slaveholder in the antebellum South.


title: African-American literature

text: Younger African-American novelists include David Anthony Durham, Karen E. Quinones Miller, Tayari Jones, Kalisha Buckhanon, Mat Johnson, ZZ Packer and Colson Whitehead, to name a few. African-American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes, who in the 1950s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives. Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh Holton.


title: African-American literature

text: African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due, Robert Fleming, Brandon Massey, Charles R. Saunders, John Ridley, John M. Faucette, Sheree Thomas and Nalo Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors. Many of these novelist take influence from writings like Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and Harriet Jacobs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" that allude to the social injustices African Americans have faced in American history. Incorporating these themes with characteristics of the Gothic, science fiction, and dystopian genres, stories like Octavia E. Butler's have begun to gain literary honor and critique. Butler's work, "Fledgling" illustrates a unique vampire mythology, tackling notions of racial superiority and gender roles. Authors like Brandon Massey strategically places some of his stories in Gothic southern settings that fuel the fear of his plots. Much like Morrison's haunted house, placing mystery and suspense in antebellum style houses is strategic to their craft.


title: African-American literature

text: As a matter of fact, the literature industry in the United States including publishing and translation has always been described as predominantly white. Definitely, there were some principal works written by black authors such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845) by Frederick Douglass, "Twelve Years a Slave" (1853) by Solomon Northrup, and "The Souls of Black Folk" (1903) by W. E. B. Du Bois that were translated into many languages.


title: African-American literature

text: However, for each of those literary works, there were dozens of novels, short stories and poems written by white authors that gained the same or even greater recognition. What is more, there were many literary pieces written by non-English speaking white authors that were translated into the English language. These works are widely known across the United States now. It is proof that there is a considerable gap in the literature that is available for US readers. This issue contributes to the problem of racial discrimination fostering the ignorant awareness of the white community.


title: African-American literature

text: Finally, African-American literature has gained added attention through the work of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who repeatedly has leveraged her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book Club. At times, she has brought African-American writers a far broader audience than they otherwise might have received.


title: African-American literature

text: In the 21st century, the Internet has facilitated publication of African-American literature. Founded in 1996 by Memphis Vaughn, TimBookTu has been a pioneer offering an online audience poetry, fiction, essays and other forms of the written word.


title: African-American literature

text: While African-American literature is well accepted in the United States, there are numerous views on its significance, traditions, and theories. To the genre's supporters, African-American literature arose out of the experience of Blacks in the United States, especially with regards to historic racism and discrimination, and is an attempt to refute the dominant culture's literature and power. In addition, supporters see the literature existing both within and outside American literature and as helping to revitalize the country's writing. To critics , African-American literature is part of a Balkanization of American literature. In addition, there are some within the African-American community who do not like how their own literature sometimes showcases Black people.


title: African-American literature

text: Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and subject to racist attitudes. This experience inspired some Black writers, at least during the early years of African-American literature, to prove they were the equals of European-American authors. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture."


title: African-American literature

text: By refuting the claims of the dominant culture, African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with the very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora, African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of the white intellectual filter. In 1922, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that "the great mission of the Negro to America and to the modern world" was to develop "Art and the appreciation of the Beautiful".


title: African-American literature

text: According to Joanne Gabbin, a professor, African-American literature exists both inside and outside American literature. "Somehow African-American literature has been relegated to a different level, outside American literature, yet it is an integral part," she says. She bases her theory in the experience of Black people in the United States. Even though African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens and were actively discriminated against. As a result, they were part of America while also outside it.


title: African-American literature

text: Similarly, African-American literature is within the framework of a larger American literature, but it also is independent. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices have been created in relative isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help revitalize the larger literary world (McKay, 2004). This artistic pattern has held true with many aspects of African-American culture over the last century, with jazz and hip hop being just two artistic examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American culture.


title: African-American literature

text: Since African-American literature is already popular with mainstream audiences, its ability to develop new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some critics—may be a thing of the past.


title: African-American literature

text: Some conservative academics and intellectuals argue that African-American literature exists as a separate topic only because of the balkanization of literature over the last few decades, or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature. According to these critics, literature is splitting into distinct and separate groupings because of the rise of identity politics in the United States and other parts of the world. These critics reject bringing identity politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks."


title: African-American literature

text: People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition. Critics also disagree with classifying writers on the basis of their race, as they believe this is limiting and artists can tackle any subject.


title: African-American literature

text: Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing deepens human understanding and previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature. (Jay, 1997)


title: African-American literature

text: The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres such as African-American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than before in its history (Andrews, 1997; McKay, 2004).


title: African-American literature

text: Some of the criticism of African-American literature over the years has come from within the community; some argue that black literature sometimes does not portray black people in a positive light and that it should.


title: African-American literature

text: W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in the NAACP's magazine "The Crisis" on this topic, saying in 1921: "We want everything that is said about us to tell of the best and highest and noblest in us. We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one." He added in 1926, "All Art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists." Du Bois and the editors of "The Crisis" consistently stated that literature was a tool in the struggle for African-American political liberation.


title: African-American literature

text: Du Bois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed when he clashed in 1928 with the author Claude McKay over his best-selling novel "Home to Harlem". Du Bois thought the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem appealed only to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness." Du Bois said, "'Home to Harlem' ... for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath." Others made similar criticism of Wallace Thurman's novel "The Blacker the Berry" in 1929. Addressing prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, the novel infuriated many African Americans, who did not like the public airing of their "dirty laundry."


title: African-American literature

text: Many African-American writers thought their literature should present the full truth about life and people. Langston Hughes articulated this view in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926). He wrote that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or white public thought.


title: African-American literature

text: More recently, some critics accused Alice Walker of unfairly attacking black men in her novel "The Color Purple" (1982). In his updated 1995 introduction to his novel "Oxherding Tale", Charles Johnson criticized Walker's novel for its negative portrayal of African-American men: "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet." Walker responded in her essays "The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult" (1998).


title: African-American literature

text: Robert Hayden, the first African-American Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, critiqued the idea of African-American literature by saying (paraphrasing the comment by the black composer Duke Ellington about jazz and music): "There is no such thing as Black literature. There's good literature and bad. And that's all."


title: African-American literature

text: Kenneth Warren's "What Was African American Literature?" argues that black American writing, as a literature, began with the institution of Jim Crow legislation and ended with desegregation. In order to substantiate this claim, he cites both the societal pressures to create a distinctly black American literature for uplift and the lack of a well formulated essential notion of literary blackness. For this scholar, the late 19th and early 20th centuries de jure racism crystallized the canon of African-American literature as black writers conscripted literature as a means to counter notions of inferiority. During this period, "whether African American writers acquiesced in or kicked against the label, they knew what was at stake in accepting or contesting their identification as Negro writers." He writes that "[a]bsent white suspicion of, or commitment to imposing, black inferiority, African American literature would not have existed as a literature". Warren bases part of his argument on the distinction between "the mere existence of literary texts" and the formation of texts into a coherent body of literature. For Warren, it is the coherence of responding to racist narratives in the struggle for civil rights that establishes the body of African-American literature, and the scholar suggests that continuing to refer to the texts produced after the civil rights era as such is a symptom of nostalgia or a belief that the struggle for civil rights has not yet ended.


title: African-American literature

text: In an alternative reading, Karla F. C. Holloway's "Legal Fictions: Constituting Race, Composing Literature" (Duke University Press, 2014) suggests a different composition for the tradition and argues its contemporary vitality. Her thesis is that legally cognizable racial identities are sustained through constitutional or legislative act, and these nurture the "legal fiction" of African-American identity. "Legal Fictions" argues that the social imagination of race is expressly constituted in law and is expressively represented through the imaginative composition of literary fictions. As long as US law specifies a black body as "discrete and insular," it confers a cognizable legal status onto that body. US fictions use that legal identity to construct narratives — from neo-slave narratives to contemporary novels such as Walter Mosley's "The Man in My Basement" – that take constitutional fictions of race and their frames (contracts, property, and evidence) to compose the narratives that cohere the tradition.


title: African-American literature

text: Criticism regarding African-American literature in the spaces of education have influenced which stories can and should be taught in schools. Nina Mikkelsen's "Insiders, Outsiders, and the Question of Authenticity: Who Shall Write for African American Children?" argues for the importance of authenticity when it comes to writing stories for young African-American audiences. Mikkelsen tracks the significance of having students exposed to diversity while also maintaining authentic narratives by incorporating stories that not only include characters of color but are also written by people of color. While her perspective is broad and marketed towards writers and readers themselves, incorporating her same themes and analysis to authentic narratives proves useful in a classroom setting. She challenges what previous 'diverse' narratives might have accomplished while also dissecting why they were demeaning to the culture of authentic storytelling itself. This article fits into the discourse on having diverse literature for students to see themselves in the classroom and the importance of choosing texts who's storytelling resonates with their own culture. Mikkelsen writes, "The idea of multicultural literature (that in which the idea of different world views or cultural references are built into the texture of the book itself-its focus, its emphasis, its subject matter) is a challenging one for readers who are not insiders of the culture being depicted." She believes providing students with content that portrays authentic and genuine reflections of multi-cultural experiences, allows for better engagement and connection in the classroom for those who resonate with these cultures.


title: African-American literature

text: African-American women's literature is literature created by American women of African descent. African-American women like Phillis Wheatley Peters and Lucy Terry in the 18th century are often cited as the founders of the African-American literary tradition. Social issues discussed in the works of African-American women include racism, sexism, classism and social equality.


title: African-American literature

text: Anna Julia Cooper in her book from 1892 titled "A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South" argued for greater and more widespread attainment of higher education for African Americans, especially women. Her work attempts to cultivate a sense of educational rigor in African American female intellectuals and the black community in the US would benefit from as a whole. This is to counter the overly aggressive and male-dominated academic writings in higher education and balance them with more female voices, hence Cooper is widely recognized as the "mother of Black feminism". Furthermore, Cooper did not just see higher education as a way to improve the socioeconomic situation of African American communities, but also as a foundation for the continuous learning and a community based approach to upliftment that would cause the "universal betterment" of people and humanity as a whole. Cooper advocated for the democratization of both public and private higher education which has been seen as "bastions of white, male elitism" and a "focus on reproducing English culture and cementing Christian doctrine", as the changing nature of American culture that now grapples with centuries of relegating women and racial minorities to the lowest rungs of society.


title: African-American literature

text: In the article "Mechanisms of Disease: African-American Women Writers, Social Pathologies, and the Limits of Medicine" (1994), Ann Folwell Stanford argues that novels by African-American women writers Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, and Gloria Naylor offer a feminist critique of the biomedical model of health that reveals the important role of the social (racist, classist, sexist) contexts in which bodies function.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was also a more general and nationwide need in light of the potential threat of invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. Since 1 April 2015 Ordnance Survey has operated as Ordnance Survey Ltd, a government-owned company, 100% in public ownership. The Ordnance Survey Board remains accountable to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It was also a member of the Public Data Group.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Paper maps for walkers represent only 5% of the company's annual revenue. It produces digital map data, online route planning and sharing services and mobile apps, plus many other location-based products for business, government and consumers. Ordnance Survey mapping is usually classified as either "large-scale" (in other words, more detailed) or "small-scale". The Survey's large-scale mapping comprises 1:2,500 maps for urban areas and 1:10,000 more generally. (The latter superseded the 1:10,560 "six inches to the mile" scale in the 1950s.) These large scale maps are typically used in professional land-use contexts and were available as sheets until the 1980s, when they were digitised. Small-scale mapping for leisure use includes the 1:25,000 "Explorer" series, the 1:50,000 "Landranger" series and the 1:250,000 road maps. These are still available in traditional sheet form.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey maps remain in copyright for fifty years after their publication. Some of the Copyright Libraries hold complete or near-complete collections of pre-digital OS mapping.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The origins of the Ordnance Survey lie in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Prince William, Duke of Cumberland realised that the British Army did not have a good map of the Scottish Highlands to locate Jacobite dissenters such as Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat so that they could be put on trial. In 1747, Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson proposed the compilation of a map of the Highlands to help to subjugate the clans. In response, King George II charged Watson with making a military survey of the Highlands under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. Among Watson's assistants were William Roy, Paul Sandby and John Manson. The survey was produced at a scale of 1 inch to 1000 yards (1:36,000) and included "the Duke of Cumberland's Map" (primarily by Watson and Roy), now held in the British Library.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Roy later had an illustrious career in the Royal Engineers (RE), rising to the rank of General, and he was largely responsible for the British share of the work in determining the relative positions of the French and British royal observatories. This work was the starting point of the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain (1783–1853), and led to the creation of the Ordnance Survey itself. Roy's technical skills and leadership set the high standard for which Ordnance Survey became known. Work was begun in earnest in 1790 under Roy's supervision, when the Board of Ordnance (a predecessor of part of the modern Ministry of Defence) began a national military survey starting with the south coast of England. Roy's birthplace near Carluke in South Lanarkshire is today marked by a memorial in the form of a large OS trig point.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: By 1791 the Board received the newer Ramsden theodolite (an improved successor to the one that Roy had used in 1784), and work began on mapping southern Great Britain using a five-mile baseline on Hounslow Heath that Roy himself had previously measured; it crosses the present Heathrow Airport. In 1991 Royal Mail marked the bicentenary by issuing a set of postage stamps featuring maps of the Kentish village of Hamstreet.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 1801 the first one-inch-to-the-mile (1:63,360 scale) map was published, detailing the county of Kent, with Essex following shortly afterwards. The Kent map was published privately and stopped at the county border, while the Essex maps were published by Ordnance Survey and ignore the county border, setting the trend for future Ordnance Survey maps.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In the next 20 years about a third of England and Wales was mapped at the same scale (see Principal Triangulation of Great Britain) under the direction of William Mudge, as other military matters took precedence. It took until 1823 to re-establish the relationship with the French survey made by Roy in 1787. By 1810 one inch to the mile maps of most of the south of England were completed, but they were withdrawn from sale between 1811 and 1816 because of security fears. By 1840 the one-inch survey had covered all of Wales and all but the six northernmost counties of England.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Surveying was hard work. For instance, Major Thomas Colby, the longest-serving Director General of Ordnance Survey, walked in 22 days on a reconnaissance in 1819. In 1824, Colby and most of his staff moved to Ireland to work on a six-inches-to-the-mile (1:10,560) valuation survey. The survey of Ireland, county by county, was completed in 1846. The suspicions and tensions it caused in rural Ireland are the subject of Brian Friel's play "Translations".


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Colby was not only involved in the design of specialist measuring equipment. He also established a systematic collection of place names, and reorganised the map-making process to produce clear, accurate plans. Place names were recorded in "Name Books", a system first used in Ireland. The instructions for their use were:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Whilst these procedures generally produced excellent results, mistakes were made: for instance, the Pilgrims' Way in the North Downs labelled the wrong route, but the name stuck. Similarly, the spelling of Scafell and Scafell Pike copied an error on an earlier map, and was retained as this was the name of a corner of one of the Principal Triangles, despite "Scawfell" being the almost universal form at the time.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Colby believed in leading from the front, travelling with his men, helping to build camps and, as each survey session drew to a close, arranging mountain-top parties with enormous plum puddings.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The British Geological Survey was founded in 1835 as the Ordnance Geological Survey under Henry De la Beche, and remained a branch of the Ordnance Survey until 1965. At the same time the uneven quality of the English and Scottish maps was being improved by engravers under Benjamin Baker. By the time Colby retired in 1846, the production of six-inch maps of Ireland was complete. This had led to a demand for similar treatment in England, and work was proceeding on extending the six-inch map to northern England, but only a three-inch scale for most of Scotland.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: When Colby retired he recommended William Yolland as his successor, but he was considered too young and the less experienced Lewis Alexander Hall was appointed. After a fire in the Tower of London, the headquarters of the survey was moved to Southampton, and Yolland was put in charge, but Hall sent him off to Ireland so that when Hall left in 1854 Yolland was again passed over in favour of Major Henry James. Hall was enthusiastic about extending the survey of the north of England to a scale of 1:2,500. In 1855, the Board of Ordnance was abolished and the Ordnance Survey was placed under the War Office together with the Topographical Survey and the Depot of Military Knowledge. Eventually in 1870 it was transferred to the Office of Works.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The primary triangulation of the United Kingdom of Roy, Mudge and Yolland was completed by 1841, but was greatly improved by Alexander Ross Clarke who completed a new survey based on Airy's spheroid in 1858, completing the Principal Triangulation. The following year, he completed an initial levelling of the country.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: After the Ordnance Survey published its first large-scale maps of Ireland in the mid-1830s, the Tithe Commutation Act 1836 led to calls for a similar six-inch to the mile survey in England and Wales. Official procrastination followed, but the development of the railways added to pressure that resulted in the Ordnance Survey Act 1841. This granted a right to enter property for the purpose of the survey. Following a fire at its headquarters at the Tower of London in 1841 the Ordnance Survey relocated to a site in Southampton and was in disarray for several years, with arguments about which scales to use. Major-General Sir Henry James was by then Director General, and he saw how photography could be used to make maps of various scales cheaply and easily. He developed and exploited photozincography, not only to reduce the costs of map production but also to publish facsimiles of nationally important manuscripts. Between 1861 and 1864, a facsimile of the Domesday Book was issued, county by county; and a facsimile of the Gough Map was issued in 1870.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: From the 1840s, the Ordnance Survey concentrated on the Great Britain "County Series", modelled on the earlier Ireland survey. A start was made on mapping the whole country, county by county, at six inches to the mile (1:10,560). In 1854, "twenty-five inch" maps were introduced with a scale of 1:2500 (25.344 inches to the mile) and the six inch maps were then based on these twenty-five inch maps. The first edition of the two scales was completed by the 1890s, with a second edition completed in the 1890s and 1900s. From 1907 till the early 1940s, a third edition (or "second revision") was begun but never completed: only areas with significant changes on the ground were revised, many two or three times. Meanwhile, publication of the one-inch to the mile series for Great Britain was completed in 1891.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: From the late 19th century to the early 1940s, the OS produced many "restricted" versions of the County Series maps and other War Department sheets for War Office purposes, in a variety of large scales that included details of military significance such as dockyards, naval installations, fortifications and military camps. Apart from a brief period during the disarmament talks of the 1930s, these areas were left blank or incomplete on standard maps. The War Department 1:2500s, unlike the standard issue, were contoured. The de-classified sheets have now been deposited in some of the Copyright Libraries, helping to complete the map-picture of pre-Second World War Britain.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: From 1824, the OS began a 6-inch (1:10,560) survey of Ireland for taxation purposes but found this to be inadequate for urban areas and adopted the five-foot scale (1:1056) for Irish cities and towns. From 1840, the six-inch standard was adopted in Great Britain for the un-surveyed northern counties and the 1:1056 scale also began to be adopted for urban surveys. Between 1842 and 1895, some 400 towns were mapped at 1:500 (126 inches), 1:528 (120 inches, "10 foot scale") or 1:1056 (60 inches), with the remaining towns mapped at 1:2500 (~25 inches). In 1855, the Treasury authorised funding for 1:2500 for rural areas and 1:500 for urban areas. The 1:500 scale was considered more 'rational' than 1:528 and became known as the "sanitary scale" since its primary purpose was to support establishment of mains sewerage and water supply. However, a review of the Ordnance Survey in 1892 found that sales of the 1:500 series maps were very poor and the Treasury declined to fund their continuing maintenance, declaring that any revision or new mapping at this scale must be self-financing. Very few towns and cities saw a second edition of the town plans: by 1909 only fourteen places had paid for updates. The review determined that revision of 1:2500 mapping should proceed apace.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The most detailed mapping of London was the OS's 1:1056 survey between 1862 and 1872, which took 326 sheets to cover the capital; a second edition (that needed 759 sheets due to urban expansion) was completed and brought out between 1891 and 1895. London was unusual in that land registration on transfer of title was made compulsory there in 1900. The 1:1056 sheets were partially revised to provide a basis for HM Land Registry index maps and the OS mapped the whole London County Council area (at 1:1056) at national expense.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: From 1911 onwardsand mainly between 1911 and 1913the Ordnance Survey photo-enlarged many 1:2500 sheets covering built-up areas to 1:1250 (50.688 inches to the mile) for Land Valuation and Inland Revenue purposes: the increased scale was to provide space for annotations. About a quarter of these 1:1250s were marked "Partially revised 1912/13". In areas where there were no further 1:2500s, these partially revised "fifty inch" sheets represent the last large-scale revision (larger than six-inch) of the County Series. The County Series mapping was superseded by the Ordnance Survey National Grid 1:1250s, 1:2500s and 1:10,560s after the Second World War.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: During World War I, the Ordnance Survey was involved in preparing maps of France and Belgium. During World War II, many more maps were created, including:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: After the war, Colonel Charles Close, then Director General, developed a strategy using covers designed by Ellis Martin to increase sales in the leisure market. In 1920 O. G. S. Crawford was appointed Archaeology Officer and played a prominent role in developing the use of aerial photography to deepen understanding of archaeology.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 1922, devolution to Northern Ireland led to the creation of Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) and independence of the Irish Free State led to the creation of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, so the original Ordnance Survey pulled its coverage back to Great Britain.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 1935, the Davidson Committee was established to review the Ordnance Survey's future. The new Director General, Major-General Malcolm MacLeod, started the retriangulation of Great Britain, an immense task involving the erection of concrete triangulation pillars ("trig points") on prominent hilltops as infallible positions for theodolites. Each measurement made by theodolite during the retriangulation was repeated no fewer than 32 times.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The Davidson Committee's final report set the Ordnance Survey on course for the 20th century. The metric national grid reference system was launched and a 1:25000-scale series of maps was introduced. The one-inch maps continued to be produced until the 1970s, when they were superseded by the 1:50000-scale seriesas proposed by William Roy more than two centuries earlier.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey had outgrown its site in the centre of Southampton (made worse by the bomb damage of the Second World War). The bombing during the Blitz devastated Southampton in November 1940 and destroyed most of Ordnance Survey's city centre offices. Staff were dispersed to other buildings and to temporary accommodation at Chessington and Esher, Surrey, where they produced 1:25000 scale maps of France, Italy, Germany and most of the rest of Europe in preparation for its invasion. Until 1969, Ordnance Survey largely remained at its Southampton city centre HQ and at temporary buildings in the suburb of Maybush nearby, when a new purpose-built headquarters was opened in Maybush adjacent to the wartime temporary buildings there. Some of the remaining buildings of the original Southampton city-centre site are now used as part of the city's court complex.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The new head office building was designed by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works for 4000 staff, including many new recruits who were taken on in the late 1960s and early 1970s as draughtsmen and surveyors. The buildings originally contained factory-floor space for photographic processes such as heliozincography and map printing, as well as large buildings for storing flat maps. Above the industrial areas were extensive office areas. The complex was notable for its concrete mural. "Celestial", by sculptor Keith McCarter and the concrete elliptical paraboloid shell roof over the staff restaurant building.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 1995, Ordnance Survey digitised the last of about 230,000 maps, making the United Kingdom the first country in the world to complete a programme of large-scale electronic mapping. By the late 1990s technological developments had eliminated the need for vast areas for storing maps and for making printing plates by hand. Although there was a small computer section at Ordnance Survey in the 1960s, the digitising programme had replaced the need for printing large-scale maps, while computer-to-plate technology (in the form of a single machine) had also rendered the photographic platemaking areas obsolete. Part of the latter was converted into a new conference centre in 2000, which was used for internal events and also made available for external organisations to hire.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The Ordnance Survey became an Executive Agency in 1990, making the organisation independent of ministerial control. In 1999 the agency was designated a trading fund, required to cover its costs by charging for its products and to remit a proportion of its profits to the Treasury.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 2010, OS announced that printing and warehouse operations were to be outsourced, ending over 200 years of in-house printing. The Frome-based firm Butler, Tanner and Dennis (BT&D) secured its printing contract. As already stated, large-scale maps had not been printed at Ordnance Survey since the common availability of geographical information systems (GISs), but, until late 2010, the "OS Explorer" and "OS Landranger" series were printed in Maybush.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: By 10 February 2011 virtually all staff had relocated to the new "Explorer House" building and the old site had been sold off and redeveloped. Prince Philip officially opened the new headquarters building on 4 October 2011.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: On 22 January 2015 plans were announced for the organisation to move from a trading fund model to a government-owned limited company, with the move completed in April 2015. The organisation remains fully owned by the UK government and retains many of the features of a public organisation.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In September 2015 the history of the Ordnance Survey was the subject of a BBC Four TV documentary entitled "A Very British Map: The Ordnance Survey Story".


title: Ordnance Survey

text: On 10 June 2019 the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) appointed Steve Blair as the Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey. Ordnance Survey supported the launch of the Slow Ways initiative, which encourages users to walk on lesser used paths between UK towns.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey's flagship digital product, launched in November 2001, is "OS MasterMap", a database that records, in one continuous digital map, every fixed feature of Great Britain larger than a few metres. Every feature is given a unique TOID (TOpographical IDentifier), a simple identifier that includes no semantic information. Typically, each TOID is associated with a polygon that represents the area on the ground that the feature covers, in National Grid coordinates.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: OS MasterMap is offered in themed layers, each linked to a number of TOIDs. In September 2010, the layers were:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The Address layers were withdrawn in about 2016 with the information now being available in the AddressBase products - so as of 2020, MasterMap consists of Topography and Imagery.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Pricing of licenses to "OS MasterMap" data depends on the total area requested, the layers licensed, the number of TOIDs in the layers, and the period in years of the data usage. "OS MasterMap" can be used to generate maps for a vast array of purposes and maps can be printed from "OS MasterMap" data with detail equivalent to a traditional 1:1250 scale paper map.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey states that thanks to continuous review, "OS MasterMap" data is never more than six months out of date. The scale and detail of this mapping project is unique. By 2009, around 440 million TOIDs had been assigned, and the database stood at 600 gigabytes in size. As of March 2011, OS claims 450 million TOIDs. As of 2005, "OS MasterMap" was at version 6; 2010's version 8 includes provision for Urban Paths (an extension of the "integrated transport network" layer) and pre-build address layer. All these versions have a similar GML schema.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey produces a wide variety of different products aimed at business users, such as utility companies and local authorities. The data is supplied by Ordnance Survey on optical media or increasingly, via the Internet. Products can be downloaded via FTP or accessed 'on demand' via a web browser. Organisations using Ordnance Survey data have to purchase a licence to do so. Some of the main products are:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: These, along with fifteen "Tour" maps, were discontinued during January 2010 as part of a drive for cost-efficiency.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 2013, Ordnance Survey released its first official app, OS MapFinder (still available, but no longer maintained), and has since added three more apps. In 2021, OS Maps added coverage in Australia.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey also offers "OS Custom Made", a print-on-demand service based on digital raster data that allows a customer to specify the area of the map or maps desired. Two scales are offered1:50,000 (equivalent to 40 km by 40 km) or 1:25,000 (20 km by 20 km)and the maps may be produced either folded or flat for framing or wall mounting. Customers may provide their own titles and cover images for folded maps.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey also produces more detailed custom mapping to order, at 1:1,250 or 1:500 ("Siteplan"), from its large-scale digital data. Custom scales may also be produced from the enlargement or reduction of the existing scales.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey supplies reproductions of its maps from the early 1970s to the 1990s for educational use. These are widely seen in schools both in Britain and in former British colonies, either as stand-alone geographic aids or as part of geography textbooks or workbooks.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: During the 2000s, in an attempt to increase schoolchildren's awareness of maps, Ordnance Survey offered a free "OS Explorer Map" to every 11-year-old in UK primary education. By the end of 2010, when the scheme closed, over 6 million maps had been given away. The scheme was replaced by free access to the Digimap for Schools service provided by EDINA for eligible schools.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: With the trend away from paper products towards geographical information systems (GISs), Ordnance Survey has been looking into ways of ensuring schoolchildren are made aware of the benefits of GISs and has launched "MapZone", an interactive child-orientated website featuring learning resources and map-related games.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey publishes a quarterly journal, principally for geography teachers, called "Mapping News".


title: Ordnance Survey

text: One series of historic maps, published by Cassini Publishing Ltd, is a reprint of the Ordnance Survey first series from the mid-19th century but using the "OS Landranger" projection at 1:50,000 and given 1 km gridlines. This means that features from over 150 years ago fit almost exactly over their modern equivalents and modern grid references can be given to old features.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The digitisation of the data has allowed Ordnance Survey to sell maps electronically. Several companies are now licensed to produce the popular scales (1:50,000 and 1:25,000) and their own derived datasets of the map on CD/DVD or to make them available online for download. The buyer typically has the right to view the maps on a PC, a laptop, and a pocket PC/smartphone, and to print off any number of copies. The accompanying software is GPS-aware, and the maps are ready-calibrated. Thus, the user can quickly transfer the desired area from their PC to their laptop or smartphone, and go for a drive or walk with their position continually pinpointed on the screen. The individual map is more expensive than the equivalent paper version, but the price per square km falls rapidly with the size of coverage bought.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The National Library of Scotland provides free access to OS mapping from 1840 to 1970, in a variety of scales from 1:1056 "five foot" maps of London to 1:625,000 "ten mile" national planning maps.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The Ordnance Survey's original maps were made by triangulation. For the second survey, in 1934, this process was used again and resulted in the building of many triangulation pillars (trig points): short (c. 4 feet/1.2 m high), usually square, concrete or stone pillars at prominent locations such as hill tops. Their precise locations were determined by triangulation, and the details in between were then filled in with less precise methods.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Modern Ordnance Survey maps are largely based on orthorectified aerial photographs, but large numbers of the triangulation pillars remain, many of them adopted by private land owners. Ordnance Survey still has a team of surveyors across Great Britain who visit in person and survey areas that cannot be surveyed using photogrammetric methods (such as land obscured by vegetation) and there is an aim of ensuring that any major feature (such as a new motorway or large housing development) is surveyed within six months of being built. While original survey methods were largely manual, the current surveying task is simplified by the use of GPS technology, allowing the most precise surveying standards yet. Ordnance Survey is responsible for a UK-wide network of GPS stations known as "OS Net". These are used for surveying and other organisations can purchase the right to utilise the network for their own uses.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey still maintains a set of master geodetic reference points to tie the Ordnance Survey geographic datum points to modern measurement systems such as GPS. Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain use the Ordnance Survey National Grid rather than latitude and longitude to indicate position. The Grid is known technically as OSGB36 (Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936) and was introduced after the 1936–1953 retriangulation.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey's CartoDesign team performs a key role in the organisation, as the authority for cartographic design and development, and engages with internal and external audiences to promote and communicate the value of cartography. They work on a broad range of projects and are responsible for styling all new products and services.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: For several decades Ordnance Survey has had a research department that is active in several areas of geographical information science, including:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey actively supports the academic research community through its external research and university liaison team. The research department actively supports MSc and PhD students as well as engaging in collaborative research. Most Ordnance Survey products are available to UK universities that have signed up to the Digimap agreement and data is also made available for research purposes that advances Ordnance Survey's own research agenda.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey has been subject to criticism. Most centres on the point that Ordnance Survey possesses a virtual government monopoly on geographic data in the UK, but, although a government agency, it has been required to act as a trading fund (i.e. a commercial entity) from 1999 to 2015. This meant that it is supposed to be entirely self-funded from the commercial sale of its data and derived products whilst at the same time the public supplier of geographical information. In 1985, the Committee of Enquiry into the Handling of Geographic Information was set up to "advise the Secretary of State for the Environment within two years on the future handling of geographic information in the UK, taking account of modern developments in information technology and market needs". The committee's final report, published in 1987 under the name of its chairman Roger Chorley, stressed the importance of accessible geographic information to the UK and recommended a loosening of policies on distribution and cost recovery.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In 2007 Ordnance Survey were criticised for contracting the public relations company Mandate Communications to understand the dynamics of the free data movement and discover which politicians and advisers continued to support their current policies.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In response to the feedback from a consultation "Policy options for geographic information from Ordnance Survey" the government announced that a package of Ordnance Survey data sets would be released for free use and re-use. On 1 April 2010 Ordnance Survey released the brand "OS OpenData" under an attribution-only license compatible with CC-BY. Various groups and individuals had campaigned for this release of data, but some were disappointed when some of the profitable datasets, including the leisure 1:50,000 scale and 1:25,000 scale mapping, as well as the low scale Mastermap were not included. These were withheld with the counter-argument that if licensees do not pay for OS data collection then the government would have to be willing to foot a £30 million per annum bill to obtain the future economic benefit of sharing the mapping.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In mid-2013 Ordnance Survey described an "enhanced" linked-data service with a SPARQL 1.1-compliant endpoint and bulk-download options.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: In June 2018, following the recommendations of the Geospatial Commission, part of the Cabinet Office, it was announced that parts of OS Mastermap would be released under the Open Government Licence. These would include:


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Ordnance Survey historical works are generally available, as the agency is covered by Crown Copyright: works more than fifty years old, including historic surveys of Britain and Ireland and much of the New Popular Edition, are in the public domain. However, finding suitable originals remains an issue as Ordnance Survey does not provide historical mapping on 'free' terms, instead marketing commercially 'enhanced' reproductions in partnership with companies including GroundSure and Landmark.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The National Library of Scotland has been developing its archive to make Ordnance Survey maps for all of Great Britain more easily available through their website.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: Wikimedia has complete sets of scans of the Old/First series one-inch maps of England and Wales; of the Old/First series one-inch maps of Scotland; of the Seventh Series One-inch maps of Great Britain (1952-1967); of the Third Edition quarter-inch maps of England and Wales; and of the Fifth Series quarter-inch maps of Great Britain. These sets are complete in the sense of including at least one copy of each of the sheets in the series, not in the sense of including all revision levels.


title: Ordnance Survey

text: The (GB) Ordnance Survey's approach can be contrasted with, for example, that of Ordnance Survey Ireland. OSI holds copyright over its mapping (and over digital copies of the public domain historical mapping), but all its maps (historic and current) are available free to view on their website (but not to reuse without a license).


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Sukumar Ray (; 30 October 1887 – 10 September 1923) was a Bengali writer and poet from the Indian subcontinent. He is remembered mainly for his writings for children. He was the son of children's story writer Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury and the father of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray.


title: Sukumar Ray

text: According to the history of the Ray family, one of their ancestors, Ramsunder Deo (Deb), was a native of Chakdah village in Nadia district of present-day West Bengal, India. In search of fortune he migrated to Sherpur in East Bengal. There he met Raja Gunichandra, the zamindar of Jashodal, at the zamindar house of Sherpur. King Gunichandra was immediately impressed by Ramsunder's stately appearance and sharp intellect and took Ramsunder with him to his zamindari estate. He made Ramsunder his son-in-law and granted him some property in Jashodal. From then on Ramsunder started living in Jashodal. His descendants migrated from there and settled down in the village of Masua in Katiadi upazila of Kishoreganj district.


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Sukumar Ray was born in a Brahmo family in Mymensingh, British India (present day Bangladesh) on 30 October 1887. His family hailed from Masua village of Mymensingh division of Eastern Bengal in British India, presently in Bangladesh. Sukumar's father Upendrakishore Ray was a famous Bengali writer, painter, violin player and composer, technologist, amateur astronomer and entrepreneur. Sukumar's mother Bidhumukhi Devi was daughter of Dwarkanath Ganguly.


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Born in the era which can be called the pinnacle of the Bengal Renaissance, he grew up in an environment that fostered his literary talents. His father was a writer of stories and popular science; painter and illustrator; musician and composer of songs; a technologist and hobbyist astronomer. Upendrakishore was also a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, who directly influenced Sukumar. Among other family friends were Jagadish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Roy, Atul Prasad Sen etc. Upendrakishore studied the technology of blockmaking, conducted experiments, and set up a business of making blocks. The firm M/s U. Ray & Sons, where Sukumar and his younger brother Subinay were involved. His sister, Shukhalata Rao, became a social worker and children's book author. Like his father, Ray also had a close acquaintance with Rabindranath Tagore.


title: Sukumar Ray

text: In 1906, Ray graduated with double Honours in Physics and Chemistry from the Presidency College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta. Before that he attended City College School, Surya Sen Street along with his classmate who inspired his famous funny character "Pagla Dashu", which appeared in several of his penned story. He was trained in photography and printing technology in England at the School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography, London, and was a pioneer of photography and lithography in India. While in England, he also delivered lectures about the songs of Rabindranath before Tagore won the Nobel Prize. Meanwhile, Sukumar had also drawn acclaim as an illustrator. As a technologist, he also developed new methods of halftone blockmaking, and technical articles about this were published in journals in England. The "Penrose Annual" published two articles by Ray. While in the United Kingdom he joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1912 and remained a member until his death, gaining his Fellowship in 1922.


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Upendrakishore started a publishing firm, "U. Ray and Sons", which Sukumar and Subinay helped to run. While Sukumar went to England to learn printing technology, Upendrakishore purchased land, constructed a building, and set up a printing press with facilities for high-quality halftone colour blockmaking and printing. He launched the children's magazine, "Sandesh", in May, 1913. Very soon after Sukumar's return from England his writings and sketches started appearing in Sandesh. After Upendrakishore died on 20 December 1915, Sukumar ran the printing and publishing businesses and the "Sandesh" for about eight years. His younger brother Subinoy helped him, and many relatives pitched in writing for "Sandesh".


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Sukumar Ray delved into a unique genre of pure nonsense and gibberish, a pioneering work in Bengali literature with a few exceptions, work that was compared to Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. Amazing sense of humor, sharp power of observation and unfathomed wit merged with a profound command on selection of words produced a class of humor which was equally approachable by children as well as the grown ups. Satyajit Ray, in the preface of the first edition of the compilation of Sukumar Ray's complete works in his centenary year, "Sukumar Sahitya Samagra", wrote:


title: Sukumar Ray

text: After his father's death in 1915, Sukumar had to take over responsibility of publication of ""Sandesh"", and his creativity reached its pinnacle. The 45 limericks in "Abol Tabol" and many other creations published in "Sandesh" still amuse the readers of all ages. He created many characters in his prose and poems. Kaath Buro, Tash Goru, Huko Mukho Hangla, Kumro Potash etc. were fictitious characters, though they were very close to our known world. He himself described his works as the product of "Kheyal Ros" (হঠাৎ ইচ্ছা;ঝোঁক/Wish; Whims; Freak; Fancy).


title: Sukumar Ray

text: Sukumar Ray died on 10 September 1923 in Kolkata from leishmaniasis, for which there was no cure at the time. He left behind his widow and their only child, Satyajit. Satyajit Ray would later shoot a documentary on Sukumar Ray in 1987, 5 years before his own death.


title: Albert Collins

text: Albert Gene Drewery, known as Albert Collins and the Ice Man (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993), was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style. He was noted for his powerful playing and his use of altered tunings and a capo. His long association with the Fender Telecaster led to the title "The Master of the Telecaster".


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins was born in Leona, Texas, on October 1, 1932. He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin' Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings. The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941, where he attended Jack Yates High School. Collins took piano lessons when he was young, but when his piano tutor was unavailable his cousin Willow Young would lend Albert his guitar and taught him the altered tuning that he used throughout his career. Collins tuned his guitar to an open F-minor chord (FCFA♭CF), with a capo at the 5th, 6th or 7th fret. At the age of sixteen, he decided to concentrate on learning the guitar after hearing "Boogie Chillen'" by John Lee Hooker.


title: Albert Collins

text: At eighteen Collins started his own group, the Rhythm Rockers, in which he honed his craft. During this time he was employed for four years at a ranch in Normangee, Texas; he then worked as a truck driver for various companies for twelve years.


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins played an Epiphone guitar during his first two years with the Rhythm Rockers, but in 1952, after seeing Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown playing a Fender Esquire, he decided to purchase a Fender. He wanted a Telecaster, but because of the cost he chose to buy an Esquire, which he took to the Parker Music Company in Houston to be fitted with a Telecaster neck pickup. This was his main guitar until he moved to California, and it was the guitar that he used on his earliest recordings, including his signature song, "Frosty". For the rest of his career he played a "maple cap"–necked natural ash body Fender 1966 Custom Telecaster with a Gibson PAF humbucking pickup retrofitted into the neck position, which became the basis for a Fender Custom Artist signature model in 1990.


title: Albert Collins

text: In 1954, Collins, then aged 22 and without a record release, was joined in the Rhythm Rockers by 17-year-old Johnny Copeland, who had just left the Dukes of Rhythm (a band he had started with the Houston blues musician Joe "Guitar" Hughes).


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins started to play regularly in Houston, notably at Shady's Playhouse, where James "Widemouth" Brown (brother of Gatemouth Brown) and other well-known Houston blues musicians would meet for "Blue Monday" jams. By the mid-1950s, he had established his reputation as a local guitarist of note and had started to appear regularly at a Fifth Ward club, Walter's Lounge, with the group Big Tiny and the Thunderbirds.


title: Albert Collins

text: The saxophonist and music teacher Henry Hayes heard about Collins from Joe "Guitar" Hughes. After seeing him perform live, Hayes encouraged Collins to record a single for Kangaroo Records, a label he had started with his friend M. L. Young. Collins recorded his debut single, "Freeze", backed with "Collins Shuffle", for Kangaroo at Gold Star Studios, in Houston, in the spring of 1958, with Hayes on saxophone. Texas blues bands of this period incorporated a horn section, and Collins later credited Hayes with teaching him how to arrange for horns.


title: Albert Collins

text: In 1964, he recorded "Frosty" at Gulf Coast Recording Studio in Beaumont, Texas for Hall Records, owned by Bill Hall, who had signed Collins on the recommendation of Cowboy Jack Clement, a songwriter and producer who had engineered sessions for Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash at Sun Records. His debut album, "The Cool Sound of Albert Collins", released in 1965 on the TCF Hall label, consisted of previously released instrumentals, including "Thaw-Out", "Sno-Cone", and "Don't Lose Your Cool".


title: Albert Collins

text: On 19 June 1968, the group Canned Heat was playing at the Music Hall in Houston, and a friend of theirs mentioned that Collins was playing at the Ponderosa Club, which they duly attended. After Collins had finished playing, they introduced themselves and offered to help secure an agent for him as well as an introduction to Imperial Records in California. With the offer of a record deal and regular live work, Collins decided to move, relocating to Kansas City in July 1968, where he played in the organ trio of the keyboardist Lawrence Wright, and then in November moving to Palo Alto, California. For his 1968 Imperial album, Collins chose the title "Love Can Be Found Anywhere (Even in a Guitar)", from the lyrics of Canned Heat's "Fried Hockey Boogie", in honor of Canned Heat and their lead singer Bob Hite, who wrote the liner notes for the album. In the spring of 1969 Collins was hired by Bob Krasnow to play on the Ike and Tina Turner album "The Hunter", which was released by Krasnow's Blue Thumb Records. The move to California was proving to be the right decision, with Collins establishing himself as a regular act on the West Coast circuit, playing at the Fillmore West and the Whisky a Go Go and at the "Newport 69" festival in Northridge, California, in June 1969 and the Gold Rush Festival at Lake Amador, California, in October. In December 1969, his debut album, "The Cool Sound of Albert Collins", was reissued as "Truckin’ with Albert Collins" by Blue Thumb.


title: Albert Collins

text: In November 1971, the Denver label Tumbleweed Records, which had been newly created by Larry Ray and Bill Szymczyk, released Collins's album "There's Gotta Be a Change"; it was the label's first official release. The single "Get Your Business Straight", backed with "Frog Jumpin'", was released by Tumbleweed in February 1972. In 1973 Tumbleweed closed because of financial problems, leaving Collins without a record label. He was signed by Bruce Iglauer, the owner of Alligator Records, in 1978 on the recommendation of Dick Shurman, whom Collins had met in Seattle. His first release for the label was "Ice Pickin'" (1978), which was recorded at Curtom Studios, in Chicago, and produced by Iglauer, Shurman and Richard McLeese. On 2 February 1978, Collins appeared in concert with the Dutch band Barrelhouse, which was his first live appearance outside the United States. The concert was filmed for the Dutch TV show "Tros Sesjun" and was subsequently released on vinyl in 1979 by Munich Records as "Albert Collins with The Barrelhouse Live".


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins won a W. C. Handy Award in the category Best Contemporary Blues Album in 1983 for his Alligator release "Don't Lose Your Cool".


title: Albert Collins

text: On 13 July 1985, Collins performed with George Thorogood and the Destroyers at "Live Aid", appearing as guest soloist on "Madison Blues"; the US part of the charity concert was held at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and, with simultaneous broadcasts in other countries, was viewed by over 1.5 billion people. In December 1986, Collins appeared in concert with Etta James and Joe Walsh at the Wiltern Theater, in Los Angeles; the concert was subsequently released on video under the title "Jazzvisions: Jump the Blues Away". The backing musicians for the concert were Rick Rosas (bass), Michael Huey (drums), Ed Sanford (Hammond B3 organ), Kip Noble (piano) and Josh Sklar (guitar). Also in 1986, Collins won a Grammy Award with Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland for their album "Showdown!" Collins finished working on his seventh Alligator album, "Cold Snap", by October 1986. It was released shortly afterwards to good reviews and received a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Recording of 1987. Collins cited the album as personally important to him because of the involvement of the organist Jimmy McGriff, an early musical idol, with whom Collins had played in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1966.


title: Albert Collins

text: On 12 February 1987, Collins appeared as a musical guest on the NBC talk show "Late Night with David Letterman". He made a cameo appearance later that same year in the comedy film "Adventures in Babysitting". Also in 1987, the American composer John Zorn and Collins collaborated on a suite, "Two-Lane Highway", which was subsequently released on Zorn's album "Spillane". On 22 April 1988, Collins appeared at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in a group consisting of B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan; the group played on the steamboat "President" as it cruised along the Mississippi River, in recognition of the musical heritage of New Orleans and artists such as Fate Marable, Louis Armstrong and Henry Red Allen, who had entertained passengers on the fleet of riverboats owned by the Streckfus brothers.


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins was signed to Point Blank Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Records, in 1991 and released the album "Iceman" the same year. Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records expressed his disappointment at the departure of Collins while acknowledging that he had signed Collins on a record-to-record basis. On 15 November 1991, Collins performed with Robert Cray, Steve Cropper and Dave Edmunds at the Guitar Legends event in Seville, a series of five concerts to promote the upcoming Seville Expo '92. The preceding month, on 28 October, Collins was filmed in concert for the television program "Austin City Limits"; the concert was broadcast on 21 February 1992 and released on DVD in April 2008 as "Albert Collins: Live From Austin, TX". In 1993, Collins played at the Point Blank Borderline Blues Festival in London, which ran from 17 March to 27 March; this was his last appearance in the UK.


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins was performing at the Paléo Festival in Nyon, Switzerland, in July 1993 when he was taken ill. He was diagnosed in mid-August with lung cancer, which had metastasized to his liver, with an expected survival time of four months. Tracks for his last album, "Live '92/'93", were recorded at shows that September. Collins died on 24 November 1993 at the age of 61. He was interred at Davis Memorial Park, in Las Vegas, Nevada. His final album, "Live '92/'93", was posthumously nominated at the 38th Grammy Awards of 1996 in the category Best Blues Contemporary Album.


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins is remembered for his informal and audience-engaging live performances. He would frequently leave the stage while still playing to mingle with the audience. The use of an extended guitar cord allowed Collins to go outside clubs to the sidewalk; one anecdote stated that he left a club with the audience in tow to visit the store next door to buy a candy bar without once stopping his act.


title: Albert Collins

text: He is also remembered for his humorous stage presence, which can be seen in the comedy film "Adventures in Babysitting". It is also prominent in the documentary "Antones: Austin's Home of the Blues": Collins was playing a lengthy solo one night at Antone's and left the building while still playing. He returned to the stage still playing the solo and resumed entertaining the audience in person. Shortly afterwards, a man arrived at the club and gave Collins the pizza he had just ordered.


title: Albert Collins

text: In his early days, Collins worked as a paint mixer and truck driver to make ends meet. In 1971, when he was 39 years old, he worked in construction, since he could not make a proper living from his music. One of his construction jobs was a remodeling project for Neil Diamond. He continued with this type of work until the late 1970s, when his wife, Gwen, talked him into returning to a career in music.


title: Albert Collins

text: After a three-month battle with cancer, Collins died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, on November 24, 1993. He was 61 years old. Surviving him were his wife, Gwendolyn, and his father, Andy Thomas.


title: Albert Collins

text: Collins was an inspiration to a generation of Texas guitar players, including Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan. He was among a small group of Texas blues players, along with Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Johnny Copeland, who shaped the legacy of T-Bone Walker into a modern blues template that was to have a major influence on many later players. In an interview with "Guitar World" magazine, Robert Cray said, "it was seeing Albert Collins at a rock festival in 1969 that really turned my head around." Two years later, Collins played at Cray's high-school graduation party in Tacoma, Washington, and the ice-pick sound sunk in deep: "That was it," Cray recalled. "That changed my whole life around. From that moment I started seriously studying the blues." "Rolling Stone" ranked Collins at number 56 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The ninth and final season of "One Tree Hill", an American television series created by Mark Schwahn for The WB Television Network was officially renewed by The CW for a ninth season on May 17, 2011. Two days later, the network announced that the ninth season would serve as the series' final season. Premiering on January 11, 2012, the series aired its 13 episodes uninterrupted.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: This season takes place sixteen months after the season eight finale, marking the series' third time jump in four years. Original series co-lead James Lafferty opted to return as a part-time regular for the final season, with original cast members Bethany Joy Lenz and Sophia Bush returning to lead the season with Austin Nichols, Robert Buckley, Shantel VanSanten, Jackson Brundage, Lee Norris, Jana Kramer, Lisa Goldstein and Stephen Colletti. Additionally, Paul Johansson and Tyler Hilton returned as regulars after notable absences, whilst former stars Chad Michael Murray, Antwon Tanner, Barbara Alyn Woods, and Craig Sheffer returned for guest appearances.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The season opened to 1.75 million viewers and a 0.9 Adults 18–49 rating, up 26% in viewers compared to its season eight finale. The final episode aired on April 4, 2012, concluding the series with 1.43 million viewers.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The ninth and final season deals with the disappearance and the kidnap of Nathan Scott. Clay battles a drug addiction and later learns of a secret that turns his life upside down. Brooke faces a demon from her past while struggling to reconnect with her father. Dan's search for Nathan brings back old faces to Tree Hill. Haley battles with the prospect of being a young widow and a single mother of two.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The CW officially renewed "One Tree Hill" for a ninth season on May 17, 2011. On May 19, 2011, Dawn Ostroff confirmed that the 13 episodes for season nine will be the last for the series. In the official announcement of The CW's schedule, they confirmed the series stars and the executive producers for the final season. Mark Schwahn, Joe Davola, Greg Prange, Mike Tollin, and Brian Robbins will all continue in their roles on the show. "Deadline" reported that the final season will begin mid-season and air its 13 episodes uninterrupted, leading into the series finale.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: Production for the season began on July 7, 2011 at the Screen Gems Studios, Wilmington, North Carolina. While further scenes are shot in downtown Wilmington, including Wallace Park and Pure Gold Gentlemen's Club. The Corning manufacturing site on North College Road is also being used as the location for some scenes based in Tree Hill's hospital, police station and TV studio. A two-day shoot for some scenes in the season was also held at Kinston Regional Jetport. Paul Johansson will direct at least one episode in the season. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, president of entertainment at The CW, Mark Pedowitz said "At this point it's the final 13," about the possibility of extending the season. He added, "You never want to say never," revealing that he did speak to executive producer Mark Schwahn and that they agreed that 13 episodes is the best number to close the series with. "One Tree Hill" filmed its final scenes on November 16, 2011.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The season aired Wednesdays at 8:00 pm Eastern/7:00 pm Central as a lead-in to new reality series, "Remodeled". It premiered on January 11, 2012, with an encore following immediately after. There was no opening credit sequence during the final season as producers didn't want to waste time that could potentially be used for story. Gavin Degraw will perform in the series finale. The series's final epilogue was sports-themed.


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: In an interview with Carina Mackenzie of Zap2it, Sophia Bush revealed she was the first person to be approached for season nine, and the first to sign on. "The idea that we would do this as 13 final episode[s] and almost shoot like it a miniseries really appealed to me," she says. "On a professional level, if we had shot 22 episodes, it would be one more year we'd be shooting through pilot season and unavailable for other things." When discussing the shows series finale and she being upset about the end, she said, "On the same side of the coin, most shows don't last this long. Most shows don't make it 6 years let alone 9, so I really feel like it's all just been a gift." In another interview, Bethany Joy Galeotti revealed her own reasons for returning, "It was a really tough decision, but I have a few friendships here that I wasn't ready to walk away from yet. Season 8 ended with like a booze-on-stage-8 kind of party. I was kind of like 'This can't be how we say goodbye. At least let's come back for 13 more episodes.'"


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: Sophia Bush directed the penultimate episode of the series. The CW has given more promotion for the launch of the final season than it has since the fifth season. Mark Pedowitz said, "I’m a big believer in giving shows a proper sendoff. "It deserves a proper sendoff. Not many shows last nine years. Mark, his team and the cast deserve a really good sendoff. I think we did a good job for them this year."


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: After backlash from fans about whether Sophia Bush had asked not to work with Murray during his episode, she cleared up the matter in an interview with Zap2it: "When I got the script and saw that Lucas was back, I called Mark, and I told him that if he wanted to write scenes where the whole gang gets together at Haley's house and talks about how they're going to find Nathan, then he should write that. I've never asked not to work with any former cast mates, and I'm certainly not going to start now, in the final season. This show is too important to me, and these characters are too important to me, and the fans are too important to me."


title: One Tree Hill (season 9)

text: The series finale aired on Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 8:00—10:00 p.m., as a special two-hour event. It featured interviews with the series' stars as they look back at the shows most memorable moments.