Brief Lives

The Brief Lives of John Aubrey wrote are a collection of short biographies of personalities from the Elizabethan era and Aubrey contemporaries from the late 17th century.

Aubrey should collect biographical information for the antiquary Anthony Wood. This had planned to write a book on all known personalities who had been at Oxford or had studied there. With time, a separate project from the legwork.

John Aubrey was trying to figure out every detail, every quirk and every form of gossip about the people. He was so dedicated that he is not only important people - the factory to find, among other biographies of William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, John Dee, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Halley and Ben Jonson - but also simple people of his environment in his notebook recorded. This disordered manuscript was posthumously made ​​and published in readable form. The original notes are now preserved in the Bodleian Library.

After they had long disputed, the Brief Lives are now seen as an important source for the study of the British society of the late 17th century.

The British actor and author Patrick Garland in 1967, a piece written and directed based on the Brief Lives.

Output

• Mr. John Aubrey's, Esq. Life ⁼ designs. Translated by Wolfgang Schlüter. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-8218-4114-1 ( = The other library 114).