Kate Bennett (Editor)
John Aubrey: Brief Lives with An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers
(OUP; paperback, 2vv, £50, 2018; hardback, 1vv, £250, 2015)

I’ve been dipping into the paperback edition of this enormous work over the last few weeks. It is so massive – the two volumes are together almost 2000 pages! – that dip into it is all one realistically can do, hence my reluctance to write proper review.

No, almost 2000 pages is not an exaggeration. Amazon quotes the work as being 1968 pages. So no wonder OUP have split the paperback edition into two volumes.

Volume I is 900+ pages and contains John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, together with “The Apparatus …” and a 125-page extended introduction. The Brief Lives themselves are, for the first time ever, reprinted entire and complete with Aubrey’s marginalia (often heraldic drawings, but also notes). Volume II is over 1000 pages of scholarly notes and commentary on the content of Volume I plus 50 pages of index.

I really can’t do better than to quote a couple of the reviews (also quoted on Amazon) from two other Aubrey scholars:

It is not an exaggeration to claim that until Kate Bennett came along, no one properly understood what the Brief Lives are … [Her 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]

This is an outstanding achievement and will undoubtedly be the standard edition of the Brief Lives for the foreseeable future … In 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]

Having heard Kate Bennet speak at the 2016 Anthony Powell Conference in York, and been fortunate enough to sit next to her at the conference dinner, I can certainly vouch for her enthusiasm, insight and wide-ranging interests. And this is an amazing piece of work.