Simon Webb

Aubrey's Brief Lives Simon Webb

Aubrey tells us that from an early age he liked to talk to old people, 'as living histories'. Since the biographer was born in 1626, many of the human chronicles he consulted would have had fresh memories of the Elizabethan age. This selection, the second from the Langley Press, covers the most famous Elizabethans John Aubrey wrote about, who were not included in 'Aubrey's Brief Lives: A Selection'. These include Francis Bacon, the occultist John Dee, and the poet Sir Philip Sidney. With his usual mix of impressions, opinions, speculation and gossip, Aubrey tells us how Francis Bacon's widow made her second husband 'deaf and blind with too much of Venus'; how the playwright John Fletcher died of vanity; and how Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke sported 'with her stallions'.