Brief Lives (original 1898; edition 2000)

by John Aubrey, Michael Hunter (Foreword), John Buchanan-Brown (Contributor), John Buchanan-Brown (Editor)

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
693	8	32,968	(4.07)	17
John Aubrey's racy portraits of the great figures of 17th-century England stand alongside Pepys's diary as a vivid evocation of the period. Aubrey was born in 1626, the son of a Wiltshire squire; at the age of 26 he inherited a family estate encumbered with debt, and finally went bankrupt in the 1670s. From then on he led a sociable, rootless existence at the houses of friends - from Oxford and the Middle Temple -pursuing the antiquarian studies which had always obsessed him. At his death in 1697 he left a mass of notes and manuscripts, among them the material for Brief Lives. He never managed to put even a single life into logical order; all we have are the raw materials, scribbled down -'tumultuously as they occurredto my thoughts'. With this full, modern English edition, which reproduces Aubrey's words as closely as possible, Richard Barber introduces us to Aubrey and his world, tells how the Livescame into being and enables many new readers to enjoy this eccentric masterpiece.… (more)

▾Book information

Member:	archiveninja
Title:	Brief Lives
Authors:	John Aubrey
Other authors:	Michael Hunter (Foreword), John Buchanan-Brown (Contributor), John Buchanan-Brown (Editor)
Info:	Penguin Classics (2000), Paperback, 528 pages
Collections:	Your library, To read
Rating:
Tags:	biography, history, England

Work Information

Brief Lives by John Aubrey (1898)

all members

▾Members

Recently added by	kwingert1, KeithGold, shea0017, COWTHTD, Ghost1y, Brazgo67, soulforged, greatgales
Legacy Libraries	Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell, Ernest Hemingway

▾Tags

▾LibraryThing Recommendations

▾Member recommendations

10
The Worlds of John Aubrey by John Aubrey (celtic)

▾Lists

100 Books to Read in a Lifetime (That Are Older Than 200 Years) (255)

Folio Society (383)

Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life Changing List (537)

» 2 more

Alberto Manguel's 100 Favorite Books (6)

Harold Bloom - The Western Canon: B. The Aristocratic Age (120)

▾Will you like it?

▾Conversations (About links)

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 17 mentions

▾Member reviews

English (7) French (1) All languages (8)

date ▼ | votes

Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)

First published by Secker and Warburg, 1949.As new; UM Press stock (

)

ME_Dictionary | Mar 20, 2020 |

It's a laugh a minute the way John Aubrey puts down his musings on the knobs of Restoration England. Great Biography of Aubrey himself by Oliver Dick to introduce the collection.

ivanfranko | May 11, 2019 |

This is a wonderful collection of gossip about Englishmen, some of them great from Elizabethan times to the Restoration of 1660. Many colourful details from here have gone on to enlighten more involved biographies. The Editor did a very good job, and the book is the better for it, I have been told.
The original first partially saw print in the early 1700's. (

)

DinadansFriend | Mar 7, 2014 |

I have, in all honesty, lost track of the number of times I have returned to this gem of a book since I first read it in the 1960s. There is something so very modern about Aubrey's way of portraying his subjects that never pales. He brings to life the people and life of the 16th and 17th centuries with personal recollections and trivia that illuminate and educate. Vivid, frank and sometimes bawdy Aubrey is always entertaining and ever enlightening.

The foreword by Oilver Lawson Dick is a none too brief life of Aubrey himself but is in its own way fascinating.

A must read if only for the lives of Shakespeare and Marvell (

)

papalaz | Oct 8, 2010 |

Casting himself as the "Ingeniose and publick-spirited young Man," who Aubrey wished to put his papers in order, Oliver Lawson Dick treated Aubrey's manuscripts as if they were his own, and while not changing the writing, ruthlessly rearranged it. It is hard to see how a better job could have been done. About a third of Aubrey's gossipy, sometimes touching, often funny, short biographies are contained here, with much more material in the long biographical introduction. Aubrey's spellings are retained; after a few pages, any book with normal spellings seems very thin stuff. (

)

Aubreycat | Mar 26, 2007 |

date ▼ | votes

Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)

▾Published reviews

no reviews | add a review

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (5 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
John Aubrey	—	primary author	all editions	calculated
Dick, Oliver Lawson	Editor	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus	Editor	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Schlüter, Wolfgang	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Wilson, Edmund	Foreword	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

▾Series and work relationships

Belongs to Publisher Series

Die Andere Bibliothek (114)

Nonpareil Books (77)

Penguin Classics

Penguin English Library, 1963 series (EL079)

Contains

The Worlds of John Aubrey by John Aubrey

Has the adaptation

Brief Lives: Play by Patrick Garland

▾Awards and Honors

Notable Lists

1000 Books to Read Before You Die

501 Must-Read Books (Emma Beare, 2006) (Memoirs)

Guardian Essential Library (Biography)

The Guardian's 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All-Time

Harold Bloom's Western Canon

view history

▾Common Knowledge

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.

For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.

Canonical title

Original title

Alternative titles

Aubrey's Brief Lives

Original publication date

1898

People/Characters

Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Winchester

Anthony Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Beaumont

Sir Henry Billingsley

(show all 35 items)

Important places

Important events

Related movies

Epigraph

Dedication

To Sir Stephen Talents

First words

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

This is the complete "Brief Lives". Please do not combine with selections from the complete work.

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Original language

Canonical DDC/MDS

Canonical LCC

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (5)

Walter Long (died 1610)

▾Book descriptions

John Aubrey's racy portraits of the great figures of 17th-century England stand alongside Pepys's diary as a vivid evocation of the period. Aubrey was born in 1626, the son of a Wiltshire squire; at the age of 26 he inherited a family estate encumbered with debt, and finally went bankrupt in the 1670s. From then on he led a sociable, rootless existence at the houses of friends - from Oxford and the Middle Temple -pursuing the antiquarian studies which had always obsessed him. At his death in 1697 he left a mass of notes and manuscripts, among them the material for Brief Lives. He never managed to put even a single life into logical order; all we have are the raw materials, scribbled down -'tumultuously as they occurredto my thoughts'. With this full, modern English edition, which reproduces Aubrey's words as closely as possible, Richard Barber introduces us to Aubrey and his world, tells how the Livescame into being and enables many new readers to enjoy this eccentric masterpiece.

▾Library descriptions

No library descriptions found.

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Haiku summary