Series:

Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 2 Volume Set

3 primary works

Volume 1

Cover of Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Volume 1
This three-volume compilation by the Oxford antiquary John Walker (1770-1831) consists mainly of manuscripts from the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, but is significant because it contains the biographical notes on the 'lives of eminent men' furnished by John Aubrey (1626-97) to Anthony a Wood, who was at the time compiling his Athenae Oxonienses. Aubrey's subsequently famous Brief Lives were published for the first time in this 1813 work, and, although described as the fourth appendix to it, in fact comprise slightly less than half of the second volume and the entirety of the third. Volume 1 consist of letters between antiquaries including Kenelm Digby, John Cotton and William Dugdale, on topics ranging from the Cornish language and the cure for a bite from a mad dog to the visit of the Princess Anne to Oxford during the tumult of her father's deposition in 1688.

Volume 2

Cover of Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Volume 2, Part 1
This three-volume compilation by the Oxford antiquary John Walker (1770-1831) consists mainly of manuscripts from the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, but is significant because it contains the biographical notes on the 'lives of eminent men' furnished by John Aubrey (1626-97) to Anthony a Wood, who was at the time compiling his Athenae Oxonienses. Aubrey's subsequently famous Brief Lives were published for the first time in this 1813 work, and, although described as the fourth appendix to it, in fact comprise slightly less than half of the second volume and the entirety of the third. Volume 2, Part 1 contains letters to and from the librarian and antiquary Thomas Hearne, as well as two accounts of Hearne's travels, on foot to Whaddon Hall in Buckinghamshire in 1716, and on horseback to Reading and Silchester in 1714, and the first fifty (organised alphabetically from Aiton to Fletcher) of Aubrey's 'lives'.

Volume 2

Cover of Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Volume 2, Part 2
This three-volume compilation by the Oxford antiquary John Walker (1770-1831) consists mainly of manuscripts from the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum, but is significant because it contains the biographical notes on the 'lives of eminent men' furnished by John Aubrey (1626-97) to Anthony a Wood, who was at the time compiling his Athenae Oxonienses. Aubrey's subsequently famous Brief Lives were published for the first time in this 1813 work, and, although described as the fourth appendix to it, in fact comprise slightly less than half of the second volume and the entirety of the third. Volume 2, Part 2 consists of the remainder of Aubrey's 'lives', organised alphabetically from Foote to Wright, together with his extended biography of Thomas Hobbes, which the famous philosopher had asked his friend Aubrey to write, but which again existed only in manuscript form until it was published in this compilation.