Brief Lives is a collection of short
biographiesA biography is a description or account of someone's life and the times, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography of a person's life written or told by that same person...
written by
John AubreyJohn Aubrey was an English antiquary and writer, best known as the author of the collection of short biographical pieces usually referred to as Brief Lives and as the discoverer of the Aubrey holes in Stonehenge....
in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Aubrey initially began collecting biographical material to assist the Oxford scholar
Anthony WoodAnthony Wood or Anthony à Wood was an English antiquary.-Early life:He was the fourth son of Thomas Wood , B.C.L. of Oxford, where Anthony was born...
, who was working on his own collection of biographies. With time, Aubrey's biographical researches went beyond mere assistance to Wood and became a project in its own right.
Aubrey was careful, wherever possible, to seek out and talk with those who had been acquainted with his subjects.
Brief Lives is a collection of short
biographiesA biography is a description or account of someone's life and the times, which is usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography is a biography of a person's life written or told by that same person...
written by
John AubreyJohn Aubrey was an English antiquary and writer, best known as the author of the collection of short biographical pieces usually referred to as Brief Lives and as the discoverer of the Aubrey holes in Stonehenge....
in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Aubrey initially began collecting biographical material to assist the Oxford scholar
Anthony WoodAnthony Wood or Anthony à Wood was an English antiquary.-Early life:He was the fourth son of Thomas Wood , B.C.L. of Oxford, where Anthony was born...
, who was working on his own collection of biographies. With time, Aubrey's biographical researches went beyond mere assistance to Wood and became a project in its own right.
Aubrey was careful, wherever possible, to seek out and talk with those who had been acquainted with his subjects. His sociable nature and his wide circle of friends helped him in this pursuit. At his death, Aubrey left his biographical writings in chaotic order. It has been the task of later editors to organize the
manuscriptA manuscript is a recording of information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s (held at the
Bodleian LibraryThe Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...
) into readable form.
Aubrey's
Brief Lives has been loved for generations for its colorful
gossipGossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It forms one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information transmitted...
y tone and for the glimpses it provides of the unofficial sides of its subjects. Aubrey's use of informants and his eye for the unusual provides much more vivid pictures than a biography based on documents could. He is frank but never malicious.
The
Brief Lives includes biographies of such figures as
Francis BaconFrancis Bacon,1st Viscount St Alban KC , son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
,
Robert BoyleRobert Boyle was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and gentleman scientist, also noted for his writings in theology. He is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law...
,
John DeeJohn Dee was a noted mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy....
, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Halley,
Ben JonsonBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
and
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. There have been many modern editions.
Patrick GarlandPatrick Garland is an actor and a director of British theatre, television and film, and a writer.With Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne Garland started Poetry International in 1963. Garland was a director and producer for the BBC's Music and Arts Department . He worked on BBC's series, Monitor...
wrote and directed a play
Brief Lives based on Aubrey's work of the same title; featuring
Roy DotriceRoy Dotrice OBE is a British actor known for his Tony Award-winning Broadway performance in the revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten.-Biography:...
in the title role, the production has been performed worldwide since 1969.
In 2008,
Aubrey's Brief Lives http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3563885/Gillian-Reynolds-the-week-in-radio.html was a five part drama serial on Radio 4. Writer Nick Warburton intertwined some of Aubrey's biographical sketches with the story of the turbulent friendship between Aubrey and Anthony Wood. Abigail le Fleming produced and directed.
External links
- Brief Lives at Google Books
- A few "Lives" from Brief Lives" at Druidic.org (Thomas Allen, Elizabeth Broughton, Thomas Harcourt, Mary Herbert
Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke née Mary Sidney , was one of the first English women to achieve a major reputation for her literary works, translations and literary patronage.-Life and work:...
, William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, and Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of fields,...
)
- Mathematician biographies in John Aubrey's Brief Lives
- Julia Trevelyan Oman Archive University of Bristol Theatre Collection, University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a university in Bristol, England. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876...