The Works of John Aubrey

; Anecdotes and traditions:
;   illustrative of early English history and literature
;   derived from ms. sources
; Collections for Wiltshire
; Consiliorum sive responsorum D. Ioan. Petri Surdi ...
;   Liber quartus in quibus multa, quae in controversium quotidiae vocantur,
;   acustissime excitata, atque disceptata, iudicio gravissimo diffiniuntur.
;   Adiecto secundum seriem alphabeticam rerum et verboru, indice copiosissimo
; Fashion of windows, in civil and ecclesiastical buildings,
;   before the conquest
; Hobbii vita
; Human nature and De corpore politico Sudoc [ABES], France
; Idea of education
; Imperium
; John Aubrey
; Lebensentwürfe
; Letters written by eminent persons
;   in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
;   to which are added, Hearne's journeys to Reading, and to Whaddon Hall,
;   the seat of Browne Willis, esq.,
;   and Lives of eminent men, by John Aubrey, esq.
;   The whole now first published from the originals in the Bodleian library
;   and Ashmolean museum, with biographical and literary illustrations ...
; Libertas
; Meishi shoden
; Memoir's John Aubrey ambracing his auto-biographical, sketches,
;   a brief embreview of his personal literary merits
;   and an account of his works: with extracts from his correspndence,
;   anecdotes of some of his contemporaries,
;   and of the times in which he lived
; Minutes of lives: for soprano and clarinet quartet: 1982

• Miscellanies
  • 1696

  ; Monumenta Britannica:
  ;   or, A miscellany of British antiquities
  ; Natural hist. & ... 1718-19
  ; Natural history of Wiltshire
  ; Playbills National Library of Ireland
  ; Proposals for printing Monumenta Britannica. - [1690?]
  ; Religio
  ; scandal and credulities...
  ; Scientific lives, 2011
  ; Selected works
  ; Specimens of Shakespeariana in the Bodleian Library at Oxford
  ; Tenures
  ; The early lives of Milton
  ; The elements of law, natural and politic
  ; The natural history and antiquities of the county of Surrey:
  ;   Begun in the year 1673. By John Aubrey, Esq; F.R.S.
  ;   and continued to the present time.
  ;   Illustrated with proper sculptures
  ;   In five volumes
  ; The only contemporary character sketch of William Harvey
  ; The Oxford cabinet, consisting of engravings from original pictures,
  ;   in the Ashmolean Museum, and other public and private collections
  ;   with biographical anecdotes, by John Aubrey, F.R.S.
  ;   and other celebrated writers
  ; Thomae Hobbes Angli Malmesburiensis Philosphi Vita
  ; Thomae Hobbes... vita... [auctore ipso]
  ;   Vitae Hobbianae auctarium [scriptum a R. Blackburne ex schedis J. Aubrey]
  ;   Thomae Hobbes... vita carmine expressa auctore se ipso ...
  ; Three prose works
  ; Treatises on the second sight
  ; Vies br[eg]̀ves [extraits]
  ; 
  ; ----------------------------------------
  

• Brief Lives
  • 1693
    'Schediasmata: Brief Lives'
    manuscripts (3 folio vols) in the Ashmolean Museum
    now in the Bodleian Library - MSS Aubrey 6–8.
  • 1813
    'Letters Written by Eminent Persons
    in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'
  • 1898
    Volume 1 - Volume 2 'Brief Lives, Chiefly of Contemporaries,
    Set Down by John Aubrey, Between the Years 1669 and 1696'
    edited by Rev Andrew Clark - 2 volumes - Clarendon Press
    standard edition for scholarly use for many years
    flawed by omissions Clark had made for 'decency'
    1680, Aubrey began collecting biographical sketches
  • 1931
    'The Scandal and Credulities of John Aubrey'
    edited by John Collier
  • 1949
    edited by Anthony Powell
  • 1949
    edited by Oliver Lawson Dick
  • 1975
    edited by Richard Barber
  • 2000
    edited by John Buchanan-Brown - introduction by Michael Hunter
  • 2015
    'Brief Lives
    with An Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers
    edited by Kate Bennett
    2 volumes - Oxford
    most scholarly and complete edition, now the standard edition
• life of Thomas Hobbes (author of Leviathan)
  the basis for Richard Blackburne's Latin biography
  'Vitae Hobbianae auctarium' published in 1681
  • 'The Life of Mr Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury'
    Bodleian MS Aubrey 9
    sometimes grouped with the Brief Lives
  • in Clark's 1898 edition of Brief Lives
    not in Bennett's 2015 edition
• Monumenta Britannica
  Aubrey's principal collection of archaeological material
  written between about 1663 and 1693
  • 1. 'Templa Druidum', a discussion of supposed "druidic" temples
    notably Avebury and Stonehenge
  • 2. 'Chorographia Antiquaria'
    a survey of early urban and military sites
    including Roman towns, "camps" (hillforts), and castles
  • 3. a review of other archaeological remains
    including sepulchral monuments, roads, coins and urns
  • 4. a series of more analytical pieces
    including four exercises
    • charting the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting
    • medieval architecture 'Chronologia Architectonica' - written in 1671
      now regarded as a milestone of architectural history
    • costume
    • shield-shapes
    ,br> manuscript: Bodleian MSS Top.Gen.c.24 and 25
  • 1980-1982
    the first three parts
    edited by John Fowles and Rodney Legg
    two volumes
• Wiltshire
  a natural historical and antiquarian study of Wiltshire in 1656

  ;   Independently, in 1659, a committee of Wiltshire gentry
  ;     decided that a county history
  ;       like William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire
  ;       Aubrey was to deal with the northern division of the county
  ;         he wrote two parts: antiquities and natural history
  ;     The work on the antiquities
  ;     (which he entitled Hypomnemata Antiquaria) was modelled on Dugdale
  ;     largely finished by 1671
  ;       draft deposited in the Ashmolean Museum in two manuscript volumes
  ;         one of these was withdrawn by his brother in 1703
  ;         and subsequently lost
  ;  He then turned to the county's natural history
  ;    Some interim observations were
  ;    read to the Royal Society in 1668 and 1675–6.
  ;    In 1685 Aubrey recast the work
  ;      modelling it on Robert Plot's 'Natural History of Oxford-shire' (1677)
  ;      finished by 1690–91
  ;    then Royal Society commissioned another transcript, at a cost of £7
  ;    1693 Aubrey asked his brother William Aubrey and Thomas Tanner
  ;      to complete the project to completion, but they failed to do so
  ; 
  ;  manuscript:
  ;    'Naturall Historie' is now Bodleian MSS Aubrey 1 and 2
  ;    The Royal Society's copy, which includes material
  ;      (mainly on supernatural phenomena) 
  ;      removed by Aubrey from his own manuscript
  ;      Royal Society MS 92
  ;   The surviving manuscript of the Antiquities
  ;     Bodleian MS Aubrey 3
  ;   A selective from 'Naturall Historie'
  ;     by John Britton 1847 for the Wiltshire Topographical Society
  ;   Aubrey, John. The Topographical Collections of John Aubrey AD 1659-70
  ;     with Illustrations
  ;     Corrected and Enlarged by John Edward Jackson
  ;     published by Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society
  ;       Devizes, 1862
  

• Perambulation of Surrey[edit]
  • 1673
    the royal cosmographer and cartographer John Ogilby
    is part of a national atlas and chorography of Britain
    licensed Aubrey to undertake a survey of Surrey
    Aubrey carried out the work
    but in the event Ogilby's project was curtailed
    and he did not use the material
    Aubrey continued to add to his manuscript until 1692

    ;
    ; manuscript is now Bodleian MS Aubrey 4
    ; In a much-revised form (with both additions and excisions)
    ; published by Richard Rawlinson
    ;   'Natural History and Antiquities of Surrey
    ;   five volumes in 1718-19
    

  • Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme
    collection of material on customs, traditions, ceremonies, beliefs,
    old wives' tales and rhymes - folklore
    compiled over many years, written up between 1687 and 1689.
    
    • The manuscript came into the hands of White Kennett
      so not with Aubrey's other collections in the Bodleian
      in the British Library, Lansdowne MS 231
    • 1809 selections from Aubreys manuscript
      Anecdotes and Traditions, ...
      edited by William J. Thoms for the Camden Society
    • 1881
      published by James Britten for the Folklore Society
    • 1972
      re-edited by John Buchanan-Brown
  • Interpretation of 'Villare Anglicanum'
    preface dated 31 October 1687
    first attempt to devote a work entirely to English place-names unfinished
    Aubrey compiled a list of some 5,000 place-names
    many correct, but some wildly wrong
    manuscript: in Bodleian MS Aubrey 5.
  • Miscellanies
    The only work published by Aubrey in his lifetime
    (1696; reprinted with additions in 1721)
    21 short chapters on the theme of 'hermetick philosophy'
    (supernatural phenomena and the occult)
    including 'Omens', 'Prophesies', 'Transportation in the Air',
    'Converse with Angels and Spirits', 'Second-Sighted Persons', etc.
    mainly comprised documented reports of supernatural manifestations

  Other works

  • notes on ecclesiastical antiquities
    • Architectonica Sacra
    • Erin Is God
  • Adversaria Physica
    a scientific commonplace book
    by 1692 was a folio 'an inch thick'
    lost, extracts survive as copies
  • plays
    two plays, both comedies intended for Thomas Shadwell
    • the first is lostr
    • Countrey Revell
      remained unfinished