Overview
The diary which Samuel Pepys kept from January 1660 to May 1669 ...is one of our greatest historical records and... a major work of English literature, writes the renowned historian Paul Johnson. A witness to the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666, Pepys chronicled the events of his day. Originally written in a cryptic shorthand, Pepys's diary provides an astonishingly frank and diverting account of political intrigues and naval, church, and cultural affairs, as well as a quotidian journal of daily life in London during the Restoration.
In 1825, when Pepys's memoirs were first published, Francis Jeffrey of The Edinburgh Review declared, "We can scarcely say that we wish it a page shorter... it is very entertaining thus to be transported into the very heart of a time so long gone by; and to be admitted into the domestic intimacy, as well as the public councils of a man of great activity and circulation in the reign of Charles II." Edited and abridged by literary critic and author Richard Le Gallienne, this edition features an Introduction by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Samuel Pepys, a tailor's son who climbed up the ladder of the royal bureaucracy, wrote a shorthand account of his often raucous experiences of London between 1660 and 1669. Although only deciphered in 1825, it has subsequently become one of the crucial sources for the social life of the Restoration and the years encompassing the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Volumes I-XI is now available for the first time in an affordable paperback series compiled and annotated by the late Robert Latham and William Matthews.
Synopsis
Subjects: Great Britain -- History -- Stuarts, 1603-1714 -- Sources Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.
When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"Pepys led a full, varied and voraciously-enjoyed life and clearly took pleasure in setting it all down in plain words. Unlike most frantically busy men, he had remarkable powers of observation."—Paul Johnson
"The bald truth about oneself, what we are all too timid to admit when we are not too dull to see it, that was what Pepys saw clearly and set down unsparingly."
—Robert Louis Stevenson
"Alexander conquered the world; but Pepys, with a keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered a world for every sense."
—Charles Whibley