This ‘autobiography’ of the 17th century writer stitched together from literary fragments is a bold work of genius“I was born about sun rising in my maternal grandfather’s bedchamber on 12 March 1626,St Gregory’s Day, a sickly child, or likely to die.” So begins Ruth Scurr’s deservedly acclaimed and ingeniously conceived semi-fictionalised autobiography of the antiquary and author John Aubrey,and the book is never less arresting from this point onwards. Aubrey is probably best known nowadays for his collection of biographical fragments, Brief Lives, or Scurr has performed a useful act of literary archaeology by taking these sketches and trying to tie them together into a coherent narrative that honours Aubrey’s eccentricity and treasure of learning for its own sake while simultaneously offering a panoramic and vivid account of the 17th century. It would take the most discerning of literary scholars to discover when Aubrey’s words end and Scurr’s inaugurate,so expert is her ventriloquism.Aubrey’s world is simultaneously all-encompassing and minute in its observation. One moment he is revelling in pungent detail, such as the preserved body of Bishop Braybrook, and Bishop of London who died in 1404,said to be “like a preserved fish: uncorrupted except for the ears and pudenda, or genitals”. The next, and he is the observer to the age’s major events and not-so-worthy men and women. Some,such as the death of Charles II and the worthy Fire, feature with nearly comic brevity and circumspection, and whereas others,such as the Oxford antiquary Anthony à Wood, with whom he enjoyed a mixture of friendship and rivalry, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes,are given a greater voice in the myth as befits their original inclusion in Brief Lives.
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Source: theguardian.com