In search of Sir Thomas Browne : the life and afterlife of the seventeenth century's most inquiring mind

In search of Sir Thomas Browne The life and afterlife of the seventeenth century's most inquiring mind

Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Sound recording - 2015

"The extraordinary life and ideas of one of the greatest--and most neglected--minds in history. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind. Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders, and fabulous creatures of Browne's time and ours. ...We meet Browne the master prose stylist, responsible for introducing hundreds of words into English, including electricity, hallucination, and suicide. Aldersey-Williams reveals how Browne's preoccupations--how to disabuse the credulous of their foolish beliefs, what to make of order in nature, how to unite science and religion--are relevant today. In Search of Sir Thomas Browne is more than just a biography--it is a cabinet of wonders and an argument that Browne, standing at the very gates of modern science, remains an inquiring mind for our own time. As Stephen Greenblatt has written, Browne is "unnervingly one of our most adventurous contemporaries" --

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Subjects
Browne, Thomas, > Sir, > 1605-1682.
Browne, Thomas, > Sir, > 1605-1682 > Criticism and interpretation.
Authors, English > 17th century > Biography.
Physicians > England > Biography.
Intellectuals > England > Biography.
Biographies.
Genres
Biographies
Published
[St. Paul, MN] : HighBridge [2015]
Prince Frederick, MD : [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Hugh Aldersey-Williams (author)
Other Authors
Simon Vance (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Physical Description
8 audio discs (approximately 10 hours) : digital, stereo, CD audio ; 4 3/4 in
ISBN
9781622317615
  • Prologue
  • Introduction
  • Biography
  • Physic
  • Animals
  • Plants
  • Science
  • Tolerance
  • Faith
  • Melancholy
  • Objects
  • The end
  • Timelines
  • Major works of Thomas Browne
  • References and further reading.
Review by Library Journal Review

Listeners encounter the life story of 17th-century physician, natural philosopher, and gentleman Sir Thomas Browne in the same lyrical and inquisitive manner as he wrote himself. Aldersey-Williams (Anatomies) tells the tale of Browne's life and works with style and grace. Browne is perhaps best known for his Religio Medici (1643) or his Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646). He is also well known for coining new terms and phrases and is in the top 100 of the Oxford English Dictionary's most cited sources; among the words whose first usage is credited to Browne are ambidextrous, cylindrical, and precocious. Simon Vance's narrative ability makes listening to the work an absolute pleasure. Browne's words and works are placed in context of his era and examined with the perspective of time. -VERDICT This work will be highly sought after by those interested in the history of science and history in general because of the content and the lyrical way it is told. Highly recommended. ["Aldersey-Williams's passion will make the reader intrigued by this often overlooked writer. This exploration of his interests will attract readers of biography, medicine, natural history, religion, and English literature": LJ 5/1/15 review of the Norton hc.]-Eric D. Albright, Tufts Hirsh Health Sciences Lib., Boston © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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