Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
If you would like to write a summary for this topic, email phil [at] gyford [dot] com
The essential companion to the diary itself is Claire Tomalin’s informative and enjoyable biography, ‘Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self’:
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140282343/
US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375725539/
Robert Louis Stevenson’s essay on Samuel Pepys is available free here: http://www.bartleby.com/28/12.html
A set of one liners:
These quotations were collected from the eight volumes of the Diary of Samuel Pepys by David Widger while preparing etexts for Project Gutenberg. Comments and suggestions will be most welcome.
Cameo of SP and cover of Henry B.Wheatley 1893 original, This reference is about quotes he is remembered by: also a wood cut print of the better half, and more of Sam in various poses.
http://gutenberg.net.au/widger/pepys/pepys.html
Stephen Coote’s “Samuel Pepys: a life”
gives an “uncluttered” biography and puts reading the diary entries in perspective.
In the introduction the author states the biography was more or less a by-product of his book “Royal Survivor”, on Charles II.
A lot of information is given about the post-diary years, the popish plot and the political background. Not as absorbing as the Tomalin I found.
Arthur Bryant trilogy. I highly recommend them.
The Man in the Making - Early years and diary years
The Years of Peril - post diary to about 1680
The Saviour of the Navy - 1680 to 1689
AB had planned a 4th to cover SP’s retirement, but never managed it.
The Man in the Making is both: (1) an excellent commentary on the diary - giving added detail, explanation and insight into many events; (2) a good, concise alternative to the diary for those who find it heavy-going. The 2nd and 3rd books are well-researched, drawing from SP’s correspondence and later diaries. The Years of Peril is a joy, with a detailed and gripping account of SP’s near-demise in the ‘Popish Plot’. The Saviour of the Navy establishes SP’s true greatness and power in later years, completing with an interesting, but over detailed account of the Glorious Revolution. All availabe in many second-hand bookshops and on Amazon. I wholly agree with this review (John Harding): http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0586064729/qid=1093758528/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_8_4/026-4563926-9598005
“Samuel Pepys In the Diary”
This book is can be read online:
“Samuel Pepys in the Diary”
by Percival Hunt, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=refresh&docId=5711957&type=book
An enthusiastic endorsement of Jeannine
DATES
from Percival Hunt,
Dirk says Questia offers a free online read of
“Samuel Pepys and his Cookbooks”
An interesting article by Roy Schreiber (Indiana University South Bend) and a fun read. Perhaps our beloved Sam was a “closet chef” at heart….
http://flan.utsa.edu/conviviumartium/SamuelPepys.htm
“Pepys and his Cookbooks”: Jeannine, once again we all are in your debt for digging up a most informative article, which sheds light not only on Sam’s behavior in the Diary but to the end of his life.
Two of Schreiber’s points especially struck me:
“Even [Pepys’s] sexual pursuits, extensive as they were, did not get the kind of treatment [in the Diary] that food did.”
Well, perhaps not. After all, Gentle Reader, even Sam—-like you and me—-may not have a daily dalliance to report, but unless you’re in hospital with “N per Os” on your chart, you’re more than likely to chow down more than once diurnally.
And:
For “the middle-class Londoners of [Pepys’s] period,” “The goal was, with the exception of areas in which the master or mistress of the house had talents and interests, to have servants do as much of the physical work as possible.”
Might this expectation persist yet today, having migrated up the class ladder?
A Fine extensive review of Claire Tomalin’s “Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self’” and a biography of Pepys worth a read is:
Clara Claiborne Park
————————————————————————————————————————
An Entrancing Ego: Samuel Pepys
The Hudson Review
Vol. LVIII, No. 3: AUTUMN 2005
http://www.hudsonreview.com/ParkSu04.html
“Among Famous Books”, by John Kelman, 1912
Just released by Gutenberg Project
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18104
For the chapter on Samuel Pepys, link to:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18104/18104-h/18104-h.htm#LECTURE_VI
An extract (on Sam’s religious life):
“His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his last will and testament, “which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking of God Almighty.” But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On a fast-day evening he sings in the garden “till my wife put me in mind of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and home to cards.” He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, he is shocked. Pepys’ religion is the same in prosperous and adverse hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, but he himself is acting all the time. “But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation.”
Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man—a conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man’s. Why are all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are?”
Samuel Pepys
His Diary, and the world he lived in
by Dr Judson Sykes Bury (1852-1944)
Published in the Manchester Medical School Gazette, Vol. XIV, May 1933.
….
The article is in two parts -
(1) matters is the Diary that are “more than a little of medical interest” - (a) his own ailments; (b) his general observations about health and disease; (c) what he recorded about the London Plague of 1665;
(2) His Personal Characteristics. which is fair and balanced. http://pages.zoom.co.uk/leveridge/pepys1.html
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