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. His diary provides an astonishingly frank and diverting account of political intrigues, naval, church, and cultural affairs, as well as a quotidian journal of daily life in London during the Restoration. Pepys' vivid, unconscious style, originally written in a cryptic shorthand, reveals an ideal witness: honest, unpretentious, and true."

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9781470888275

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"""Alexander conquered the world; but Pepys, with a keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered a world for every sense."" -- ""Charles Whibley"" ""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"" ""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."" -- ""Edinburgh Review"""

Author Information

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although he had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalization of the Royal Navy. The detailed private diary he kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the nineteenth century and is one of the most important primary sources for history of the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Fred Williams, a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, works in theater, film, television, and radio in England, Ireland, and America. Besides narrating audiobooks, he is a performer in living-history reenactments, an archer, and a poet.

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