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.