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  • Published: 7 July 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141439938
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1152
  • RRP: $40.00

The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection




Published to co-incide with the pbk of Claire Tomalin's Whitbread Prize-winning biography

The 1660s represent a turning point in English history, and for the main events - the Restoration, the Dutch War, the Great Plague, the Fire of London - Pepys provides a definitive eyewitness account. Along with lively descriptions of his socializing, his amorous entanglements, his theatre-going & music-making. Unequalled for its frankness, high spirits & sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece & a marvellous portrait of 17th-century life.

  • Published: 7 July 2003
  • ISBN: 9780141439938
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1152
  • RRP: $40.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633, the son of a tailor. He was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1655 he married and in the following year entered the household of his cousin Admiral Edward Montagu. In 1660 he became the Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board (the same year in which he began his diary). In 1669, the year in which he closed his diary, his wife died. In 1672 he was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty, an appointment he held with one interruption of four years at the end of Charles II's reign until the Glorious Revolution when he retired from public life.

As well as being one of the most important civil servants of his age, he was a widely cultivated man, taking a learned interest in books, music, the theatre, and science. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1684 and later served as President. He died childless in 1703. His contemporary John Evelyn remembered him as 'universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things'.

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