Awards

• Winner of Shortlisted for the 2017 Katharine Briggs Folklore Award.

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9780198784296

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Written with wit, verve, and not a little erudition, The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenth century scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself - in terms of methodology and discipline, but also, just as importantly, narrative and style. --Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century In a compact and concise volume, Williams manages to survey and analyze a remarkable range of Aubrey's scholarship on physical and textual historical evidence alike ... Above all, Williams shows, the understanding of antiquarians, their worldviews, and practices is ill served by a one-size-fits-all approach, as well as by the isolation of any one nation's antiquaries from the republic of letters. --Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kelsey Williams's book enables us to appreciate how extensive the antiquarian researches of an industrious scholar could become in the second half of the seventeenth century. It helps us to understand how a new way of looking at the past grew to possess the imagination of a generation of well-educated men through the experience of a single remarkable individual. --Graham Parry, Spenser Review The Antiquary triumphantly answers that question in the affirmative. But Jackson Williams does not just leave it at that: his ambition is greater still, as he also positions the book as an exercise in historical methodology itself, seeking to challenge Arnaldo Momigliano's paradigmatic distinction between antiquarian and historical texts, first propounded in his 1950 essay Ancient History and the Antiquarian. This is a bold claim, indeed, and one with which not all scholars will necessarily agree, but it is one that nevertheless deserves to be taken seriously and to receive further attention. Written with wit, verve, and not a little erudition, The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenth-century scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself - in terms of methodology and discipline, but also, just as importantly, narrative and style. --Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century Kelsey Williams's book enables us to appreciate how extensive the antiquarian researches of an industrious scholar could become in the second half of the seventeenth century. It helps us to understand how a new way of looking at the past grew to possess the imagination of a generation of well-educated men through the experience of a single remarkable individual. --Graham Parry, Spenser Review Williams's research is all the more heroic given the disorderly state of the Aubrey papers ... In the service of conciseness, Williams puts his considerable learning to deft use ... The chapter on Brief Lives features an incisive account of how Aubrey's premium on the minutiae of a biographical subject conflicted with the rhetorically lofty tendencies of other biographers. Williams's exposition of Aubrey's key term recrementum for the seemingly insignificant details is especially illuminating ... The conclusion deftly summarizes the principal tendencies and tensions in Aubrey's antiquarian enterprises. ... Williams shows, the understanding of antiquarians, their worldviews, and practices is ill served by a one-size-fits-all approach, as well as by the isolation of any one nation's antiquaries from the republic of letters. --Reid Barbour, Milton Quarterly

Written with wit, verve, and not a little erudition, The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenthcentury scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself in terms of methodology and discipline, but also, just as importantly, narrative and style. * Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century * In a compact and concise volume, Williams manages to survey and analyze a remarkable range of Aubreys scholarship on physical and textual historical evidence alike ... Above all, Williams shows, the understanding of antiquarians, their worldviews, and practices is ill served by a one-size-fits-all approach, as well as by the isolation of any one nations antiquaries from the republic of letters. * Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Kelsey Williamss book enables us to appreciate how extensive the antiquarian researches of an industrious scholar could become in the second half of the seventeenth century. It helps us to understand how a new way of looking at the past grew to possess the imagination of a generation of well-educated men through the experience of a single remarkable individual. * Graham Parry, Spenser Review * The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenth century scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself. * Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century *

Written with wit, verve, and not a little erudition, The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenth century scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself - in terms of methodology and discipline, but also, just as importantly, narrative and style. --Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century In a compact and concise volume, Williams manages to survey and analyze a remarkable range of Aubrey's scholarship on physical and textual historical evidence alike ... Above all, Williams shows, the understanding of antiquarians, their worldviews, and practices is ill served by a one-size-fits-all approach, as well as by the isolation of any one nation's antiquaries from the republic of letters. --Reid Barbour, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kelsey Williams's book enables us to appreciate how extensive the antiquarian researches of an industrious scholar could become in the second half of the seventeenth century. It helps us to understand how a new way of looking at the past grew to possess the imagination of a generation of well-educated men through the experience of a single remarkable individual. --Graham Parry, Spenser Review The Antiquary triumphantly answers that question in the affirmative. But Jackson Williams does not just leave it at that: his ambition is greater still, as he also positions the book as an exercise in historical methodology itself, seeking to challenge Arnaldo Momigliano's paradigmatic distinction between antiquarian and historical texts, first propounded in his 1950 essay Ancient History and the Antiquarian. This is a bold claim, indeed, and one with which not all scholars will necessarily agree, but it is one that nevertheless deserves to be taken seriously and to receive further attention. Written with wit, verve, and not a little erudition, The Antiquary constitutes a major and very welcome reassessment not only of a significant (and extremely well connected) seventeenth-century scholar, but also of the whole antiquarian project itself - in terms of methodology and discipline, but also, just as importantly, narrative and style. --Angus Vine, The Seventeenth Century Kelsey Williams's book enables us to appreciate how extensive the antiquarian researches of an industrious scholar could become in the second half of the seventeenth century. It helps us to understand how a new way of looking at the past grew to possess the imagination of a generation of well-educated men through the experience of a single remarkable individual. --Graham Parry, Spenser Review Williams's research is all the more heroic given the disorderly state of the Aubrey papers ... In the service of conciseness, Williams puts his considerable learning to deft use ... The chapter on Brief Lives features an incisive account of how Aubrey's premium on the minutiae of a biographical subject conflicted with the rhetorically lofty tendencies of other biographers. Williams's exposition of Aubrey's key term recrementum for the seemingly insignificant details is especially illuminating ... The conclusion deftly summarizes the principal tendencies and tensions in Aubrey's antiquarian enterprises. ... Williams shows, the understanding of antiquarians, their worldviews, and practices is ill served by a one-size-fits-all approach, as well as by the isolation of any one nation's antiquaries from the republic of letters. --Reid Barbour, Milton Quarterly

Author Information

Kelsey Jackson Williams is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on antiquarianism and learned culture in early modern Scotland, England, and Scandinavia. He was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford (MSt, DPhil) and was a lecturer at Jesus College, University of Oxford, before taking up his British Academy fellowship.

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