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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Samuel Pepys
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(1633–1703)
The greatest diarist in the English language. His talents made him a man of considerable influence, through his work at the *Admiralty and as a fellow of the *Royal Society. But he would be forgotten today, except by specialist historians, if he had not responded to a new decade and the likelihood of a new era (the *Restoration) by buying a notebook, bound in calf, in which he made his first daily entry on Sunday, 1 January 1660. From then until 31 May 1669 (when he closed the diary because of trouble with his eyes) Pepys recorded the most intimate details of his private life, intermingled with public events in one of London's most eventful decades.
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Typical of this mixture is the drama of the *Great Fire, during which he takes the precaution of burying his parmesan cheese in the garden. The diary is in the Shelton system of shorthand, widely used at the time. In sections where Pepys feels a greater need for secrecy he lapses into garbled French or Spanish: 'To supper with my wife, very pleasant, and to bed – my mind, God forgive me, too much running upon what I can faire avec la femme de Bagwell demain' (19 Dec. 1664). The next day we learn, again in French, that he did what he wanted with Bagwell's wife.
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Pepys left his magnificent library, including the diary, to his old college at Cambridge, Magdalene. Extracts from the diary were first printed in 1825, prompted by the recent publication of *Evelyn's. By the 1890s it was all in print, apart from some expurgated passages, and a full modern edition was completed in 11 volumes in 1983.
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