As I mentioned a couple of months ago I’ve been adding Wikipedia content into the Encyclopedia pages. I’ve now looked through the 2,797 Encyclopedia pages and 535 now feature Wikipedia content.

If you notice anything on these pages that looks obviously broken, do let me know. Some things may be unavoidable, because the text and HTML can change at any time without me knowing, but hopefully it should mostly work.

Also, if you come across a Wikipedia page that should be included on a corresponding Pepys Encyclopedia page, do let me know. Here’s a rough guide to the rules of thumb I developed:

  • Places, particularly London streets and towns outside London, don’t feature Wikipedia content, even if it exists — the Wikipedia content usually focuses on modern-day information which doesn’t seem very relevant. Similarly with most food and drink.

  • I’ve checked almost all the people in the Encyclopedia, although I soon realised that there was little point checking any women, as they so rarely feature in Wikipedia from that time period. Titled men are nearly always included of course!

  • I didn’t check ships and taverns. Very few, if any, of these seemed to feature in Wikipedia, so I ended up not bothering. Let me know if you find any famous enough to have their own Wikipedia page.

So there we go — hopefully that will help us make sense of who people are over the next few years.



3 Comments

First Reading

Graeme Webber  •  Link

Thanks for, and congratulations on adding Wikipedia content to your Samuel Pepys site.
I'm currently writing a musical based on this 1600's period and Samuel Pepys has been invaluable in assisting me.
Its great to think that 450 years down the track on the eve of 2008 (New Zealand time 6.15pm) someone from the period (Samuel Pepys)can actually have a direct physical and psychological help in my own writing.
Pleased to add your site to my 'favourites'!
Graeme Webber.

Pedro  •  Link

“adding Wikipedia content”

Wikipedia is a great asset, but being at times the first point of call in the Encyclopaedia, it hides a wealth of information added by annotators.

So, in my humble opinion, may I suggest that hidden gems can be found in them annotations!

C WARING  •  Link

1660 SAMUEL pepys attended the execution of one of the signatures CHARLES 1 DEATH warrant.
which tavern did he go into later that day?

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