Brief Lives

Front Cover
Boydell & Brewer, 1982 - Biography & Autobiography - 332 pages
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.

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Contents

Section 1
20
Section 2
49
Section 3
61
Section 4
65
Section 5
74
Section 6
75
Section 7
82
Section 8
83
Section 19
189
Section 20
194
Section 21
213
Section 22
215
Section 23
218
Section 24
241
Section 25
272
Section 26
276

Section 9
100
Section 10
109
Section 11
116
Section 12
121
Section 13
162
Section 14
164
Section 15
165
Section 16
169
Section 17
177
Section 18
178
Section 27
277
Section 28
290
Section 29
292
Section 30
302
Section 31
304
Section 32
307
Section 33
308
Section 34
324
Section 35
328
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