Brief Lives

It is a Golden Age for readers of John Aubrey's Brief Lives. The definitive and monumental John Aubrey: Brief Lives with An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers edited by Kate Bennett has recently been published in paperback by OUP. Weighing in at 1776 pages (and 3kg) it is good value for its £50 price tag. However, as it is an academic publication it is a difficult starting point for the general reader - Bennett preserves in her transcription all of Aubrey's hundreds of biographies with their chaotic organisation, notes, insertions and crossings-out leading to a disjointed and fragmented read. There are several more heavily-edited and rearranged concise versions available which are easier on the eye.

Editions from 1949 and 1975 are available in various forms edited respectively by Oliver Lawson Dick and Richard Barber. The Barber version was prepared for the Folio Society and apart from the quality of the book binding and the pictures of Aubrey's subjects it is the inferior in my view. Barber has the boldness to criticise the Lawson Dick edition as it "suffers from too much editing for my personal taste" but then goes on to make the absolutely fatal editing error of updating Aubrey's (albeit haphazard) spelling and punctuation thus stripping his prose of much of its charm - why did he think we wouldn't understand that Erasmus "Loved not fish, though borne in a Fish-towne" so he needed to adjust it to "born in a fish town" ? Hardly a sentence goes by without modification. Also the long biographical introduction by Lawson Dick "The Life and Times of John Aubrey" is a work of unalloyed genius compared with Barber's rather dry few pages. Lawson Dick also presents more material with 134 Lives included to Barber's selection of only 92.

The Lawson Dick edition, originally published by Martin Secker & Warburg, is also available as an old edition from the Penguin English Library, from Godine (USA edition with an additional introduction by Edmund Wilson) and as a new Vintage (Penguin Random House) edition with an additional introduction by Ruth Scurr. It is this latter edition I recommend for general readers.

At this point I should also mention Ruth Scurr's brilliant "autobiography" of Aubrey John Aubrey My Own Life constructed from his writings (including the Lives).

There are a couple of e-book versions available on the Kindle store. John Aubrey's "Brief Lives" - Gossip from the 17th Century is currently available for a competitive £2.65. It is edited by John Sandbach whose own description of himself makes him sound like a perfect subject for Aubrey:

"The stars aligned to open gateways for John Sandbach as a young man in the `60s, sparking his imagination and introducing him to a plethora of simpatico arenas. His work within these arenas has shaped him into a colorful multi-hyphenate of astrology-based arts and sciences. With 2016 marking his 50th anniversary as a studier of the stars, Sandbach is a highly respected astrology researcher, a haiku poet with several published collections, a short story author, a novelist of three densely detailed science fiction books, and an educator…among other skills. A humble compassionate man with empathy and understanding of the inner workings of humankind ..."

His edition is more prosaic containing a brief introduction by the editor and then 132 of the Lives each starting with a brief biography of the subject. Closer inspection reveals that these introductions, though entirely uncredited, are those Lawson Dick wrote for his edition. Likewise the versions of the Lives themselves are Lawson Dick's. As such this is a cheap and good edition to buy but lacks Lawson Dick's magnificent introduction. One also wonders about the uncredited use of the work of Lawson Dick (the one-time partner of the bon viveur Robert Carrier) who died relatively recently.

The other Kindle edition currently available (for £3) is Aubrey's Brief Lives: Omnibus Edition edited by Simon Webb and William Duggan. This is an omnibus of three Langley Press editions selecting the "most famous" 28 lives. Webb is the editor supplying a short general introduction and introductions to each life and Duggan is the translator from Latin for the life of Hobbes. The Lives themselves are based on the 1898 transcriptions by Rev Andrew Clarke with some of his bowdlerised details reinstated. Unfortunately, in my view, the editor has also chosen to modernise the spelling and punctuation.

Finally I should mention the stage play Brief Lives based on excerpts from the Lives. The genesis of this play was that Roy Dotrice was playing Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part 2 (directed by Peter Hall and John Barton) and was directed to John Aubrey as a possible template for the character. The director Patrick Garland subsequently wrote and directed the one-man show with Dotrice as an elderly Aubrey looking back over his life. The show premiered in 1967 and Dotrice was still touring it over 40 years later when I saw it in 2008. I was at a talk on Aubrey by Kate Bennett at the Society of Antiquaries where she mentioned her dislike of this play for its portrayal of Aubrey as an ancient eccentric rather than the energetic archaeologist, biographer, historian and proto-scientist that he was. However as an audience member pointed out the play was so entertaining that it served as a good introduction to Aubrey for people who would then dig deeper.

In addition to the Oliver Lawson Dick edition, 1949 saw publication of another edition of Brief Lives edited by Anthony Powell - this edition was praised (at least by Richard Barber). It is no longer in print but second-hand copies are occasionally available. At the same time Powell also published his biography John Aubrey and His Friends which is still available and which I enjoyed although its publisher, Graham C. Greene (ie. the other one), described it as a "bloody boring book". Aubrey was a role model for Powell who also identified strongly with Justice Shallow "my favourite character in Shakespeare". A.N.Wilson points out that Aubrey's Brief Lives clearly inspired Powell both in his own Journals and in A Dance to the Music of Time itself.

Finally here is how Aubrey described his own work:

These Remaines are tanquam Tabulata Naufragy [like fragments of a ship-wreck] that after the Revolution of so many Years and Govenments have escaped the Teeth of Time and (which is more dangerous) the Hands of mistaken Zeale. So that the retrieving of these forgotten Things from Oblivion in some sort resembles the Art of a Conjurer, who makes those walke and appeare that have layen in their graves many hundreds of years: and to represent as it were to the eie, the places, Customes and Fashions, that were of old Times.