Brief Lives

“Writing is, among things, the place where we can help ourselves cope with the dark parts of our living.” —John Aubrey

Brief Lives—Chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696 is a collection of short, colorful, gossipy biographies written by John Aubrey in the last part of the 17th century.  It took two centuries, however, before Aubrey received real recognition as a great biographer. It was in 1898 that Reverend Andrew Clark (1856–1922), a minister and editor, edited the transcript of Brief Lives that established Aubrey’s name as the man who invented biography.

Clark’s edition was published in two volumes: Volume I from letters A to H and Volume II from I to V, with biographies of distinguished 17th-century Englishmen such as Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Thomas Browne, Walter Harvey, Thomas Hobbes,  Robert Hooke, Sir Walter Raleigh and William Shakespeare.