John Aubrey and the rhapsodic book

This article argues that J ohn A ubrey and his biographical collaborator, A nthony W ood, pioneered a new kind of encyclopaedic collection, which they understood to be empirically grounded ‘truth’ but which contemporaries derided as a ‘rhapsody’. A ‘rhapsody’ implies a basis in a new empirical practice, and a rejection of rhetorical tradition. Aubrey's voluminous collections were never published, largely because his work was overwhelmed by its attempt at comprehensiveness. Aubrey collaborated with Wood in his biographical encyclopaedia A thenae O xonienses , which was prosecuted for its political content and also widely criticised as ‘barbarous’ in style and ‘trivial’ in content for ‘heaping up’ biographical detail gleaned, via A ubrey, from letters, documents, and lives specially written by a vast range of people. The ‘rhapsody’ is therefore remarkably socially broad‐ranging. In this article I examine A ubrey's B rief L ives as an anti‐rhetorical rhapsody stuffed with strange bedfellows; also his play T he C ountrey R evell and his three‐volume antiquarian collection M onumenta B ritannica . I explain how the ‘rhapsody’ was incompatible with print culture and therefore is most characteristically a manuscript, with Aubrey's failure to get his A P erambulation of S urrey printed given as an example.