Aubrey's Villa

John Aubrey frs (1626-1697) was an antiquary, natural philosopher, biographer, folklorist, proto-anthropologist, travel writer, topographer, and experimental scientist. He inherited the small estate of Lower Easton Piercy, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, on the death of his father, but growing financial troubles led him into catastrophic debt and an enforced sale of his property. The present volume reproduces a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which is a bound compilation of drawings and Latin verses relating to that estate, which Aubrey made over the course of twenty years. These drawings range from surprisingly engaged and loving depictions of English rural landscape to his unrealised projects for a virtuoso's villa and gardens in the Italian style. This facsimile offers us many things: a visual souvenir, a record of disappointed hopes, and the nearest we can get to an early modern individual's engagement with a particular place.