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The antiquarian and topographer John Britton (1771-1857) is best remembered for his multi-volume series of The Beauties of England and Wales. A self-taught author and scholar, he was attracted by the work of John Aubrey (1626-97), who was born in the same Wiltshire village as him, and had very similar interests as an antiquarian and biographer, famous for his Brief Lives and for his surveys of and writings on Avebury and Stonehenge. Britton's research on Aubrey's life induced him to write a fresh account, using surviving manuscripts as well as printed sources, which would clear up the contradictions and errors of earlier versions. This 1845 book is a fascinating portrait of a sickly child who ended up a pauper because of family debts and lawsuits, but was a diligent and intelligent scholar, scientist and occultist, and a close friend of Thomas Hobbes and Robert Hooke.

Aubrey, John, 1626-1697

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John Aubrey (1626-1697), antiquary, natural philosopher, and virtuoso, is best-remembered today for his 'Brief Lives', biographies of his contemporaries filled with luminous detail which have been mined for anecdotes by generations of scholars. However, Aubrey was much more than merely the hand behind an invaluable source of biographical material; he was also the author of thousands of pages of manuscript notebooks covering everything from the origins of Stonehenge to the evolution of folklore. Kelsey Jackson Williams explores these manuscripts in full for the first time and in doing so illuminates the intricacies of Aubrey's investigations into Britain's past. 'The Antiquary' is both a major new study of an important early modern writer and a significant intervention in the developing historiography of antiquarianism. It discusses the key aspects of Aubrey's work in a series of linked chapters on archaeology, architecture, biography, folklore, and philology, concluding with a revisionist interpretation of Aubrey's antiquarian writings. While covering a wide variety of scholarly territory, it remains rooted in the common thread of Aubrey's own intellectual development and the continual interaction between his texts as he studied, discovered, revised, and rewrote them across four decades. Its conclusions not only substantially reshape our understanding of Aubrey and his works, but also provide new understandings of the methodologies, ambitions, and achievements of antiquarianism across early modern Europe.

Historiography --- Biography --- Aubrey, John, - 1626-1697 --- Great Britain