Sir Thomas Browne: A Life

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Reid Barbour (Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

Sir Thomas Browne

A Life

Reid Barbour (Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)

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English

Oxford University Press
15 August 2013

Biography; Biography: literary; Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800; Early modern history: c 1450 to c 1700

Sir Thomas Browne: A Life is the first full-scale biography of the extraordinary prose artist, physician, and polymath. With the help of recent archival discoveries, the biography recasts each phase of Browne's life (1605-82) and situates his incomparable writings within the diverse intellectual and social contexts in which he lived, including London, Winchester, Oxford, Montpellier, Padua, Leiden, Halifax, and Norwich.

The book makes the case that, as his contemporaries fervently believed, Browne influenced the intellectual and religious direction of seventeenth-century England in singularly rich and dynamic ways. Special attention is paid in the biography to Browne's medical vocation but also to his place within the scientific revolution. New information is offered regarding his childhood in London, his European travels and medical studies, the setting in which he first wrote Religio Medici, his impact on readers during the English civil wars, and the contemporary view of his medical practice.

Overall, the image of Browne that emerges is far bolder and more cosmopolitan, less complacent and provincial, than biographers have assumed ever since Samuel Johnson doubted Browne's claim that his life up to age thirty resembled a romantic fiction filled with miracles and fables. The biography has extensive material for anyone interested in the histories of religion, education, science and medicine, seventeenth-century England, and early modern philosophy and literature.

By: Reid Barbour (Professor Department of English and Comparative Literature University of North Carolina Chapel Hill)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 242mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 37mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780199679881
ISBN 10: 0199679886
Pages: 552
Publication Date: 15 August 2013
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reid Barbour is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. With David Norbrook, he is the editor of The Works of Lucy Hutchinson: Volume One: The Lucretius Translation (OUP); and he has published widely in the field of early modern English studies. With Brooke Conti, he is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford University Press edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume One, Religio Medici. He also edits Studies in Philology.

Reviews for Sir Thomas Browne: A Life

`makes controversy comprehensible. Barbour aimed to show how remarkable Browne's life was; in the achievement of that aim his success is triumphant.' C. D. C. Armstrong, Church Times