John Aubrey: Brief Lives with An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199689539 ISBN 13: 9780199689538

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This is the first scholarly edition of Aubrey's Brief Lives since 1898, the first to include the complete text of the three Brief Lives manuscripts (including censored and deleted material, title pages, antiquarian notes, and the indices), and the first to provide a full general and critical introduction and comprehensive commentary.

This edition is the first to respect the original arrangement of the Lives in Aubrey's manuscripts. Brief Lives is presented as an antiquarian and collaborative text, containing the autograph papers of biographical subjects, the annotations of those among whom the manuscripts circulated, and wax seals. As well as 25 facsimile pages, there are over 160 images, reproducing for the first time all Aubrey's horoscopes, pedigrees, coats of arms, and topographical sketches as they are found in the manuscripts. The text respects the mise-en-page of the manuscript and its status as an incomplete and heavily revised work-in-progress while presenting an edited, rather than a diplomatic, text.

The commentary presents extensive new research on manuscript sources including much material not previously known to be Aubrey's or associated with him. It also reflects the state of current scholarship. Each life is introduced by a headnote placing the life in context. This gives the dates and sequence of composition and an account of Aubrey's relationship with the biographical subject, the circulation of knowledge of that subject in Aubrey's circle, and a full account of Aubrey's notes on the subject of the life in other manuscripts and correspondence. Aubrey's biographical informants also have a long note, as do uncompleted or missing Lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Kate Bennett, member of the Oxford English faculty

Kate Bennett was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. She was Fellow in English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and a Research Fellow of New College, Oxford. She teaches English at Magdalen, Oxford, and is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick.

Review:

"It is not an exaggeration to claim that until Kate Bennett came along, no one properly understood what the Brief Lives are . . . Bennett's edition . . . marks a new beginning for Aubrey scholarship . . . It is fitting that such scholarly devotion, extending over two decades, should have given rise to an edition that is an innovation in its own right. Nothing like it has appeared before, and it will last, if not forever, for a very long time." --Ruth Scurr, Times Literary Supplement

"One of the most astonishing feats of scholarly editing in recent decades . . . extensive, painstakingly exact, and omnisciently annotated . . . altogether stupendous." --Noel Malcolm, The New York Review of Books

"Kate Bennett . . . has achieved the apparently impossible in producing a full and accurately formatted edition of Aubrey's Lives-a splendid achievement, on which the Oxford University Press is also to be congratulated." --Katherine Duncan-Jones, TLS Books of the Year 2015

"[A] treasure trove of content that gives us unrivaled access to the intellectual and social life of the mid- to late-seventeenth century in England . . . It is no small credit to Bennett that her massive commentary is also replete with fascinating material and memorable moments. With material drawn intensively from Aubrey's own papers but also very widely from print and manuscript material." --Reid Barbour, Renaissance Quarterly

"'This is an outstanding achievement and will undoubtedly be the standard edition of the Brief Lives for the foreseeable future . . . [I]n its rich and varied content it is of interest . . . to anyone studying English learned culture in the seventeenth century, particularly historians of the Royal Society, of mathematics and of antiquarianism. Aubrey himself was acutely concerned that his works should be satisfactorily edited and made use of after his death; in this edition he is luckier than he could have hoped for." --Kelsey Jackson Williams, History

"The publication of Bennett's wonderful edition of the Brief Lives, in two volumes as handsome as they are typographically responsive to the extraordinary artefact which they contain, is a cause for unreserved celebration in the academy and far beyond . . . it is an exceptional achievement and the resulting work will stand as the text of the Brief Lives for the foreseeable future." --Peter Davidson, English Historical Review

"Impeccably managed . . . wonderfully easy to read . . . This splendid edition gives us, perhaps for the first time, a true life of the first English biographer." --Claire Preston, Milton Quarterly

"The edition is based on exemplary scholarly principles . . . a labour of love . . . a landmark edition that changes how we understand the roots of modern biography." --Andrew Hadfield, Renaissance Studies

"[V]irtually unprecedented in the history of scholarly editing . . . unsurpassed for its scholarly rigour . . . This monumental edition is a triumph and has been well worth waiting for. Aubrey will never seem quite the same again." --Michael Hunter, The Seventeenth Century

"[A] remarkable edition . . . Kate Bennett is not the first accomplished editor of the Lives, but she is much the most ambitious . . . Bennett reproduces the text of the manuscripts as it stands, with resourceful conventions of presentation that make her two volumes a joy to handle as well as to read. It is an extraordinary feat of scholarly assiduity . . . [Bennett] brings him alive as never before." --Blair Worden, Literary Review

"[E]xtraordinary . . . Bennett has produced a work of enormous value for all students and readers of biography." --C. Rollyson, CHOICE

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0199689539
• ISBN 13: 9780199689538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1933
• Editor: Bennett Kate