Brief Lives

by John Aubrey

Brief Lives (1669-1697) is a collection of short biographical sketches on famous British figures by author, antiquarian, and archaeologist John Aubrey. The work is significant for its unique style, a blend of facts--names, dates, family, important works--and personal anecdotes for which Aubrey combined his skills for research and conversation to compile. Unpublished during his lifetime, the text was pieced together from extensive handwritten manuscripts by numerous editors and scholars, and over the centuries has become a beloved cultural artifact of early-modern Britain. A fascinating figure and gifted researcher in his own right, John Aubrey sought to capture the significance of his era and the people whose contributions to art, politics, science, and philosophy were not only changing Britain, but the world, forever. As a historical record, his Brief Lives provides valuable information on such figures as poet John Milton, playwright William Shakespeare, philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and chemist Robert Boyle. But as a work of art, the text humanizes them, reminding its readers that these were people whose desires, imperfections, and day-to-day lives were not unlike our own. We turn to his works to discover that Sir Walter Raleigh was a "poor" scholar "immerst...in fabrication of his owne fortunes," or to read that Shakespeare, the son of a butcher who worked for his father as a youth, was known to "make a speech" while slaughtering a calf. At times straightforwardly factual, at others filled with gossip, Brief Lives is a document of its time that attempts to record a living history of knowledge and influence. Whether it succeeds is beside the point--that it speaks to us centuries on is the heart of the matter, the reason it must be read. A well-known man in his lifetime, Aubrey moved between cultural and political circles with ease, compiling the sources that would later become Brief Lives. Although a tireless writer and scholar, he published little during his life. His work, including Brief Lives, is thus the product of centuries of diligent research and editing from numerous scholars who understood, as the reader of this volume surely will, that Aubrey's work deserved to reach the public. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of John Aubrey's Brief Lives is a classic of British literature and biography reimagined for modern readers.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Classics, British Literature, Literature, Biography Memoir

733 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1813

About the author

Brief Lives , published posthumously, of English antiquarian John Aubrey contains character sketches of notable thinkers and writers of 17th century.

People perhaps best know John Aubrey, fellow of royal society and a natural philosopher, as the author of his collection of short biographical pieces. This pioneer archaeologist for the first time often recorded numerous megalithic and other field monuments in south and particularly discovered the Avebury henge. He observed the holes at Stonehenge despite considerable doubt whether they currently bear his name. He, also a pioneer folklorist, collected together a miscellany of material on customs, traditions and beliefs under the title Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme . He set to compile county histories of Wiltshire and Surrey but finished neither project. His Interpretation of Villare Anglicanum , also unfinished, first attempted to compile a full-length study of placenames. Applied mathematics and astronomy widely interested him, friend with many of the greatest scientists of the day.

Reviews

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Challenged by its opening sentence in Ruth Scurr’s forward: “If you love English books, you will come, sooner or later, to Brief Lives: the vivid, sometimes scurrilous, collection of short biographies that John Aubrey wrote in the last decades of his long life, but failed to publish before his death in 1697” (p. vii), this book would suggest a kind of reading experience to its readers in terms of some in-depth information in which the biographer was interested. However, it was written some 300 years ago in his writing style; therefore, each ‘Life’ having unpredictably different lengths would amazingly astound us due to such a length of each entry. From its 37 selected biographies in this publication, the first three longest ones (in approximate pages) are on Thomas Hobbes (19.5), Francis Bacon (11.5), and John Milton (7) whereas the first three shortest ones (in lines) are on Robert Burton (5), John Colet (7), and John Cleveland (14).

Mr Aubrey has since revealed some peculiar or notable anecdotes for each ‘Life’, in other words, something informal, sometime gossip-like to his readers. That was his key objective, rather than simply followed suit as the traditional biography that tends to be factually narrative; in contrast, he’s focused on presenting his selected personalities with his familiarity and sense of humor. As we can see from the following excerpts:

1) Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
His books. He had very few books. I never saw above half a dozen about him in his chamber. Homer and Virgil were commonly on his table; sometimes Xenophon, or some probable history, and Greek Testament, or so.
Reading. He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men, he should have known no more than other men.
… (p. 64)

2) Francis Bacon Lord St Albans (1561-1626)
Mr Thomas Hobbes (of Malmesbury) was beloved by his lordship, who was wont to have him walk with him in his delicate groves where he did meditate: and when a notion darted into his mind, Mr Hobbes was presently to write it down, and his lordship was wont to say that he did it better than anyone else about him; for that many times, when he read their notes he scarce understood it not clearly themselves.
… (p. 16)

3) John Milton (1608-74)
He had brown hair. His complexion exceeding fair – he was so fair that they called him ’the lady of Christ’s College’. Oval face. His eye a dark grey.
He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill. His father instructed him. He had an organ in his house: he played on that most.
Of a very cheerful humour. – He would be cheerful even in his gout fits, and sing.
… (p. 82)

Comparatively, the following texts are from the three shortest biographies mentioned above.

1) Richard Burton (1577-1640)
Mr Robert Hooke of Gresham College told me that he lay in the chamber in Christ Church that was Mr Burton’s, of whom ’tis whispered that not withstanding all his astrology and his book of melancholy, he ended his days in that chamber by hanging himself. (p. 26)

2) John Colet (1467-1519)
After the conflagration, his monument being broken, his coffin, which was lead, was full of a liquor that conserved the body. Mr Wyld and Ralph Greatorex tasted it and ’twas a kind of insipid taste, something of an ironic taste. The body felt, to the probe of a stick that they thrust into a chink, like brawn. The coffin was of lead and laid in the wall about two and a half feet above the surface of the floor. (p. 29)

3) John Cleveland (1613-58)
John Cleveland was born in Warwickshire. He was a fellow at St John’s Collage in Cambridge, where he was more taken notice of for his being and eminent disputant, than a good poet. Being turned out of his fellowship for a malignant he came to Oxford, where the king’s army was, and was much caressed by them. He went thence to the garrison at Newark upon Trent, where upon some occasion of drawing of articles, or some writing, he would needs add a short conclusion, viz. ‘and hereunto we annex our lives, as a label to our trust’. After the king was beaten out of the field, he came to London, and retired in Gray’s Inn. He and Samuel Butler, etc. of Gray’s Inn, had a club every night. He was a comely plump man, good curled hair, dark brown. Died of the scurvy, and lies buried in St Andrew’s Church in Holborn. (p. 29)

In brief, reading this book on those more or less famous 37 biographies would definitely awe-inspiring due to their unique threads of information we’ve never known or read before. Considerably readable but arguably grammatical, this collection based on Clark’s edition first published in 1898 (p. iv) has been modernized for any keen reader in the early 21st century. However, if some still prefer reading its original spellings and grammar, I’d like to recommend another august publication entitled “Aubrey’s Brief Lives” (Penguin, 1982) edited by Oliver Lawson Dick.

[Rozzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are idiosyncratic books and then there are idiosyncratic books. Aubrey's "Brief Lives" (along with "Le Grand Meaulnes") is the most idiosyncratic book of which I know. There are some who would argue for "The Anatomy of Melancholy." There are those who would nominate others. But I think that John Aubrey was born and died within his own head and never absorbed anyone else's criteria for anything. Not for biography, not for history, not for memoirs or diaries. No. John Aubrey, whether he knew it or not, made his own rules. And every single one of his miraculous "Brief Lives" bears the traces of his so terribly individual mental processes.

To read them is to enter into another world. I have to get a new copy every so often because I always give my copy away. Keep in mind, though, that no one actually has to shell out money for Aubrey anymore. Free Aubrey is widely available on the net. Aubrey's approach to "biography" (which is so different as to truly require the scare quotes) permits him to include the vaguest suspicions, the most (to some) "irrelevant" details, and the strangest attributions of weird personal qualities. There's a relationship here with the works of Joseph Cornell.

Most of Aubrey's subjects live in and only in Aubrey's work, having otherwise lost all semblance of human interest since the 17th Century. We have, after that time, built up many sorts of informational filters in order to limit our attention to people of "real" interest, of "real" value (mainly "celebrities"), and excluding the polloi of the ages. But 99.999% of us ARE "polloi" and it's really interesting when, as here in Aubrey, they (we) get some attention.

Aubrey's "Brief Lives" are available in their entirety and for free here: (Volume 1) http://archive.org/details/brieflives... and (Volume 2) here: http://archive.org/details/brieflives....

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written sometime with anecdotes and probably to amuse himself and friends, this book on some 134 personalities (excluding himself covering 108 pages by the editor) has since been read and admired by those bibliophiles as well as voracious readers since his name’s been off and on mentioned together with those familiar, vaguely known or unknown men/women of eminent stature, for instance, the first 15 names with their professions should suffice in the meantime:

George Abbot: Archbishop of Canterbury
Thomas Allen: Mathematician
Lancelot Andrewes: Divine
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans: Philosopher and statesman
Isaac Barrrow: Mathematician
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher: Playwrights
Sir John Birkenhead: Poet and journalist
Sir Henry Blount: Traveller
Edmund Bonner: Divine
Caisho Borough: n/a
James Bovey: n/a
Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork: Statesman
The Hon. Robert Boyle: Natural philosopher and chemist
Henry Briggs: Mathematician
Elizabeth Broughton: n/a

After each profession, we would read his/her synopsis written by the editor, then the text itself which might be short or long according to his/her famous or unique deeds as recorded, informed and referenced by the informants or formal publications. However, some might wonder if the biographies in this book are worth reading at all; therefore, I’d like to tell you on two facts, first, they span a two-century timeframe: between the 16th and 17th centuries (back cover) and, two, the material used in this edition has been taken from the real thing, that is, “from fifty volumes in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and from sixteen volumes in the libraries of the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Society, The Royal Society, the Corporation of London, and the British Museum” (p. 1).

I think there are really some illustrious Aubrey scholars who have written their inspiring reviews on this book or, hopefully, on some biographies from those formidable original volumes kept in the mentioned libraries in England. So it’s my idea to write something on only three excerpts I’ve found originally interesting as follows:

First, around half a century ago I sometime heard some people or teachers comment on some friends’ or students’ illegible handwriting in terms of its unreadability and mockingly/humorously said in Thai, ลายมือเหมือนไก่เขี่ย (literally translated: This handwriting is like a hen’s scratches). I thought it’s well said to signify something concrete as a Thai sentence but it was my misunderstanding when I read the Edmund Weller biography and came across this one, “He writes a lamentably poor hand, as bad as the scratching of a hen” (p. 361). So that’s it! The Thai phrase might, arguably, have mysteriously been translated from this English one by our anonymous Thai scholars who probably happened to have read this and subtly translated and adopted it to comment on such poor handwriting. It works and is a kind of informally spoken Thai because we can instantly understand how poor it is.

Next, I found this paragraph on Richard Boyle amazingly and incredibly fascinating, something like what you’d expect to read in Ripley’s Believe It or Not!:

Master Boyl, after Earle of Cork (who was then a Widdower) came one morning to waite on Sir Jeofry Fenton, at that time a great Officer of State in that Kingdome of Ireland, who being ingaged in business, and not knowing who it was who desired to speake with him, a while delayed him access; which time he spent pleasantly with his young Daughter in her Nurse's Arms. But when Sir Jeoffry came, ... , he civilly excused it. But Master Boyl replied, he had been very well entertayned; and spent his time much to his satisfaction, in courting his Daughter, if he might obtaine the Honour to be accepted for his Son-in-lawe. At which Sir Jeoffry, smiling (to hear one who had been formerly married, move for a Wife carried in Arms, and under two years old) asked him if would stay for her? To which he frankly answered him he would, and Sir Jeoffry as generously promised him he should then have his consent. And they both kept their words honourably. And by this virtuous Lady he had thirteen Children, ten of which he lived to see honourably married, and died a grandfather by the youngest of them. (pp. 138-139)"

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loads of touching and fascinating details about the daily lives of contemporary figures, and anecdotes that bring them to life, like looking through small windows of time into their private lives. Any page has something of interest in it. We learn that Raleigh, for example, 'took a pipe of tobacco a little before he went to the scaffold, which some formal persons were scandalised at', and that William Harvey, besides discovering the circulation of the blood, 'kept a pretty young wench to wait on him, which I guess he made use of for warmth-sake as King David did'.

[Graychin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an 1852 journal entry, Henry David Thoreau describes visiting the library in nearby Cambridge and looking over an aged volume by Samuel Purchas, possibly Hakluytus Posthumus (1625). The experience of reading the book, says Thoreau, was "like looking into an impassable swamp, ten feet deep with sphagnum, where the monarchs of the forest, covered with mosses and stretched along the ground, were making haste to become peat." This is his way of recommending something. For Thoreau, old books like Purchas's "suggested a certain fertility, an Ohio soil, as if they were making a humus for new literatures to spring in." And yet, he complained, they were "rarely opened, are effectually forgotten and not implied by our literature and newspapers."

I’m not sure it's true, or means very much, to say that the old books are no longer "implied by our literature and newspapers," but there is something especially rich and peaty in the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Shakepeare and Marlowe and Jonson, of course, are just a beginning. There are in addition the poets (too many to mention) and the philosophers, plus Burton and Browne and Traherne, and translators of genius like Philemon Holland, Thomas Urquhart, and John Florio, whose 1603 version of Montaigne T.S. Eliot considered the best work of translation in the English language.

The flavor of that golden era resurfaces here and there throughout the eighteenth century and even into the nineteenth. You taste it in Swift, for example; in Walton's The Compleat Angler; in Gilbert White; in Sterne's Tristram Shandy; in Charles Lamb; and even, I suggest, in certain writings of our own Benjamin Franklin, and in Moby Dick. By the twentieth century, however, it appears only in works of self-conscious copy-catism, like Holbrook Jackson's pleasantly Burtonesque The Anatomy of Bibliomania or John Barth's The Sot Weed Factor.

For the best of the authentic old flavor, you must take a slice of the old books themselves. This I recently did. Visiting a favorite used bookshop, I was able, in the panicked last moments before my wife finally extracted me from the stacks, to pick out a copy of John Aubrey's Brief Lives. I had first discovered Aubrey (1626-1697), as most people do, through quotations from his work borrowed by other writers. Rose Macaulay, for example, published a wonderful commonplace book titled The Minor Pleasures of Life, which includes more quotes from Aubrey than from any other author.

The Penguin edition of Brief Lives, introduced and edited by Oliver Lawson Dick, is a mere selection from Aubrey's original, but it still includes more than 120 of his short biographies. Aubrey's subjects span the Elizabethan era through to the restoration of Charles II. He seems to have been related to half of the people he mentions, and many were still living when he wrote. Reading the book from cover to cover is like watching old England march by in grand procession – poets, mathematicians, peasants, doctors, divines, alchemists, soldiers, scientists, astrologers, aristocrats – while an inveterate gossipmonger whispers in your ear all their public foibles and personal shames.

Aubrey's diction and spelling (preserved in my copy) reek gloriously of the seventeenth century. The preposterous, winning names of some of his subjects are enough in themselves to summon the era – names like Hasdras Waller, Ithamara Reginalds, Hierome Sanchy, Venetia Digby, Carlo Fantom, Wenceslas Hollar, Caisho Borough, Leoline Jenkins, and Sylvanus Scory. Aubrey's gift for physical description and telling anecdote are unbeatable, his stories by turns poignant, superstitious, snarky, and uproariously bawdy. Every paragraph is a pleasure and a surprise.

Of a Lady Honywood, for example, Aubrey writes:

"Said she (holding a Venice-glass in her Hand), I shall as certainly be Damned, as this Glasse will be broken: And at that word, threw it hard on the Ground; and the Glasse remained sound; which gave her great comfort."

Of John Hoskyns:

"Now when I have sayd his Inventive faculty is so great, you cannot imagine his Memory to be excellent, for they are like two Bucketts, as one goes up, the other goes downe."

Of Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke:

"She was very salacious, and she had a Contrivance that in the Spring of the yeare, when the Stallions were to leape the Mares, they were to be brought before such a part of the house, where she had a vidette (a hole to peepe out at) to looke on them and please herselfe with their Sport; and then she would act the like sport herselfe with her stallions. One of her great Gallants was Crooke-back’t Cecil, Earl of Salisbury."

Of James Harrington:

"Anno Domini 1660, he was committed prisoner to the Tower; then to Portsey castle. His durance in these Prisons (he being a Gentleman of a high spirit and a hot head) was the procatractique [originating] cause of his deliration or madnesse; which was not outrageous, for he would discourse rationally enough and be very facetious company, but he grew to have a phansy that his Perspiration turned to Flies, and sometimes to Bees."

Of Sir William Petty, when he was challenged to a duel:

"Sir William is extremely short-sighted, and being the challengee it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates for the place, a darke Cellar, and the weapon to be a great Carpenter’s Axe. This turned [his opponent’s] challenge into Ridicule, and so it came to nought."

Of Shakespeare Aubrey reports (how reliably I don't know) that as a young man he was briefly apprenticed to a butcher in Stratford and used to make florid speeches whenever he prepared to kill a calf. Francis Bacon Aubrey assures us was a pederast. He tells us also that William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, liked to meditate in the dark and had caves dug on his property just for this purpose.

It goes wonderfully on and on.

I don’t suppose that Aubrey’s Brief Lives is quite the sort of thing that Thoreau had in mind with his image of a rich old book like "an impassable swamp, ten feet deep in sphagnum." He may not have approved. But where Purchas's books may or may not have failed make a promising seedbed for future literatures to spring in, there can be little doubt, I think, that Aubrey's did. At least I like to imagine there's a direct line of descent from Brief Lives to the modern literature of celebrity gossip, hearsay, and personal sniping that is so ubiquitous in the tabloids and newspapers and blogosphere of the English-speaking world. No one today, however, can match Aubrey for humor, wit, and limitless antique charm.

[Holly Lindquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

If John Aubrey were alive today, I imagine it'd be fantasticly entertaining to have a conversation with him down at the local watering hole, be it coffeehouse, pub, or disreputable tavern. He collected juicy bits of gossip the way some folk hoard stamps or comic books, and this book is a treasure-house of anecdotes regarding notable Elizabethan figures. You'll read about the naughty hijinks of Sir Walter Raleigh, the ill-timed fart that sent an earl into self-imposed exile for seven years, the very dumb death of a very smart man, and the unforgettable episode of the coffin liquor. Yes, you read that correctly.. coffin liquor.

P. S. Don't miss Oliver Lawson Dick's sparkling biography of Aubrey in the edition published by David R. Godine books!

[Lee Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was soooo good. Lots of fun. It makes me want to learn more about Elizabethan England. As we gossip lovers say, it's juicy. I didn't realize how mathematics was all the rage back then. It was everyone's hobby. Like Suduku for smart people. Almost everyone was a clergyman and mathematician. There are some neat stories on Phillip Sidney and Edmond Spenser. There was also a bawdy “tap the bottom” story on Aubrey's own grandfather. JA's character sketches were vivid but I'm not sure how accurate. JA is very opinionated and standards for historiography were pretty shaky. But that makes it better! I especially liked the entry on Dr. Harvey of circulation of the blood fame. He believed you should not marry a widow as her womb would hold the “character” of her late husband and all your kids would really be his. Kind of like the old story about how if a blooded dog mates with a mongrel all the blooded dog's future pups will be mutts. JA himself is amusingly Protestant. He is pretty honest about showing the rapaciousness of Henry VIII's “reforms.” JA thinks the whole English Reformation was just a big looting. It's quite cynical. It also explains why so many of his sketch subjects were so irreligious. Fat Henry and his greedy reformers made it all seem like crap.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Aubrey was a real hoot.

[Gingerholli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This cheeky book was on the 1001 Books list.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although abridged, I thoroughly enjoyed both Brian Cox's reading and Aubrey's descriptions of the people of his time. I'm glad that I started with the abridged because, despite my reasonable familiarity of the time I did not recognize many names. Perhaps with reading it I will associate them with characters from other books and simply did not recognize their spoken name.

Regardless, the tales were humorous, engaging, and obviously interestingly intuitive by Aubrey. I need to know more about him.

[Edward]

“[This] gives Aubrey a claim to be considered the first English biographer, and sets him beside Boswell as an equal, though on the whole very different, master of the biographical art.”
-Anthony Powell, introduction to “Aubrey’s Brief Lives” (1949)

[Rachael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this under duress for reasons I'd rather not get into. Honestly, it was a slog and a slow read. Though I did appreciate the humor of Aubrey's observations, and his unique take on what makes for a biographical sketch. Overall, I'm glad I read it. I appreciated Lawson Dick's biography of John Aubrey -- that helped me put it all into context. But if you are looking for a quick, easy read, this isn't it!

[Chasmom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that hooked me on history--another volume read in my grandfather's library, lost after his death, and hunted down for my own library. I suspect Terry Pratchett read this when very young, too.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

shows the passages of time that this play was a worldwide hit in its day and I'm only now the first person marking it as read on goodreads

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Estratto dall'edizione in due volumi Andrew Clark, Oxford, 1898:

John Colet, D.D., deane of St. Paule's, London—vide Sir William Dugdale's Historie of Paule's church. After the conflagration his monument being broken, his coffin, which was lead, was full of a liquour which conserved the body. Mr. Wyld and Ralph Greatorex tasted it and 'twas of a kind of insipid tast, something of an ironish tast. The body felt, to the probe of a stick which they thrust into a chinke, like brawne. The coffin was of lead and layd in the wall about 2 foot ½ above the surface of the floore.

Il buon J.R. Wilcock deve essercisi divertito parecchio:

John Colet, dott. in teologia, Arciprete di Saint Paul’s a Londra. Dopo l’incendio di Londra (siccome il suo monumento era rotto) qualcuno fece un buchino vicino al coperchio della sua bara, che era chiusa come il recipiente per fare un pasticcio e piena di un liquido atto a conservare la salma. Mr Wyld e Ralph Greatorex l’assaggiarono e aveva una specie di gusto insipido, qualcosa come un gusto ferrugginoso. La bara era di piombo e incassata nel muro, circa a due piedi e mezzo sopra la superfìcie del pavimento.
Questo era un modo strano, rarissimo, di conservare un corpo: forse era una salamoia, come per la carne, la cui salsedine i molti anni e il piombo avevano addolcito e resa insipida. Il corpo, tastato con un paletto introdotto in una fessura, sembrava maiale lesso.

Prosit!

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admire this book, and the philosophy of Aubrey in writing it, but I admit I had trouble actually reading it. The entries were all very disjointed. I love the idea of brief lives --of potted biographies that get to the heart of a person via a few well-chosen anecdotes -- but this isn't really that. There are good anecdotes, and also dishy asides, but it doesn't really cohere. It reads like it was: a collection of miscellany that was never really finished, much less edited into shape. That is, what I want is the anecdotes to layer on top of each other to produce a portrait. But this is more like some sort of abstract art, wild brush strokes going this way and that. Some people love that, and would love it in this book, but for me it made it a bit of a slog.

[James Violand · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book of biographies by a friend of many of the most prominent Englishmen in the Seventeenth Century. If Aubrey did not know the individual, he spoke to friends who had been close to the subject. Filled with tasty morsels of information, it is a fairly quick read. The author was a tragic figure who hob-knobbed with the aristocracy and nobility and was an eye-witness to many of the pivotal events of this era. Encumbered by outrageous inherited debts, Aubrey survived by the largess of his powerful friends.

[Yurii · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the risk of contradicting The Economist’s editor, I doubt that Brief Lives is one of the best autobiographies ever written. I, however, must admit that my knowledge of the XVII century English history is far from being deep. Hence, I might simply not capable of fully appreciating the book. Nevertheless, I must admit that the book is exceptionally entertaining.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. A disjointed treasure trove of biography, rumour, scandal, gossip, and random meteorological information. If you are interested in the Elizabethan or Restoration periods, it is a must read.

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been wanting to read this for years and somehow never got round to it. It wasn't very coherent, and frankly I was rather bored. I found it an excellent insomnia cure.

[Sweta · Rating 5 out of 5]

hhh

[Jacob Bornheimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting short gossipish biographies of people from 1400-1697, well worth a read.

[Kimberly Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming short biographical tale written in 1680 were written from what Aubrey had seen or heard.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully gossipy, but to be taken with a pinch of salt.

[April · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t like this.

[Kai Raine]

A series of vignettes

[Ignacio Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cahuín de la antigüedad inglesa, god. 10/10

[Diwan Mal]

capeshit crazy that kantbot think this is factoids lol. jonson smoked marlowe ahahahah but he also belive fabianigger shaw about bardolatory saying "ibsen bettta".
fabianism is sick joke where well learned fellas pretend to have proleterian beliefs (projecting that people will eventually like payal kapadia more than Rajamouli) midwit tastemaker like podcah aren't we

[Marie (UK) · Rating 2 out of 5]

been trying to read books that have been on my TBR shelf a while (and on my real bookshelves too) but my son is right i need to get back to something that will grab my imagination. This one certainly lives up to its title of brief lives as Aubrey gives potted biographies of 17th century Personalities.

There is more information in many of the editors notes than in most of the Author's writing. It has not helped by the fact that in each biography the editors have tried to modernise the english by putting in brackets after it modern translation or by the fact that Aubrey does a planned biography and then adds notes after it.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a curious, but enjoyable read. A mass of potted biographies of significant (mostly English) and some not so significant individuals from the 16th and 17th centuries. Informal and gossipy and seemingly written as an early draft. Includes politicians, philosophers, scientists, playwrights, theologians etc.