Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the current diary entry have yesterday’s date?

Pepys wrote in his diary at the end of each day, about the day’s events. Therefore each diary entry is posted to the site at the end of the day, at 11pm UK time. In the USA this is 6pm EST or 3pm PST.

Why do some years appear like 1659/60 instead of just 1660?

In Pepys’ time the new year officially began on 25 March, but in practice many people tended to take 1 January as the first day of the year. Thus in the official style 1 February 1659 is 1 February 1660 to most people. Pepys wrote such dates in his diary along the lines of “1 February 1659/60”. You can read more on this subject on the Calendar topic of the Encyclopedia.

I think I’ve found a spelling or grammatical error in a diary entry; what should I do?

All the diary entries are copied directly from the Project Gutenberg version of the diary and therefore any errors (almost always) originate there. Feel free to email me the URL of the page and the error you’ve found and I will periodically pass them on to Project Gutenberg. However, do bear in mind that Pepys spelling and language is often different from our own so it might be his “fault”!

I don’t understand the money used in the diary. What do l., s. and d. mean?

These denote pounds, shillings and pence respectively. For more information see the Currency units topic in the Encyclopedia. To work out the approximate values of prices in today’s money, see the Values today topic.

I have a question that isn’t answered here. What should I do?

If your question is about the events in a particular diary entry then your best bet is to post an annotation asking the question on that entry’s page. If you have a general question, than you could try asking the discussion group or email me at phil [at] gyford [dot] com.