The whole ferment of the Elizabethan Age and the vigor of the century that followed are in this book. Sir Walter Raleigh, discomfited at dinner by his son (he loved a wench well), the poet Suckling, cheating at cards, Shakespeare, Wolsey, Sidney, Sir Thomas More, the Herberts—they're all here alive and kicking, along with the more infamous soldiers, scholars, and whores: Elizabeth Broughton—she was soon taken notice of at London, and her price was very deare; Ralph Kettell—He observed that the Howses that had the smallest beer had the most drunkards; Richard Knolles—he was handed but a 14 night before. He unluckily lost a good opportunity of being preferred; Benetia Digby—when her head was opened there was found but little braine; Mariana Morgen—she is a swidging lustie woman. Here he is—the seventeenth century Boswell—magotie-headed, naughty, eccentric John Aubrey, a hanger-on at great houses, with a pen for the morning after and the greatest respect for scandal, reveling with gusto in these intimate portraits of the Renaissance great. Aubrey's Lives has been known and looted by scholars for centuries. This first American issue of Oliver Lawson Dick's edition makes them available to all, and presents a picture of Aubrey himself in a hundred-page biography compiled by the editor from Aubrey's notes.