Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
News about this site and other Pepys-related events.
I’m experimenting with a few things on the site, with the aim of starting it running again in the New Year. To make this easier for me — and because very few annotations have been posted recently — I’ve turned off the ability to post annotations for a while.
Glyn Thomas has previously worked on two walks which have been posted here, around the City of London, and Westminster. He has now updated both of these and added a third walk, around that other centre of Pepys’ diary life, Greenwich.
I promised several of you that I’d give a final update on statistics, now that the diary’s ended. It’s been two-and-a-half years since I last gave a detailed update, so let’s so what’s changed…
I’ve give the the family tree a probably final update. I’d been planning to give it a tweak — filling in some of the post-diary dates, and adding a couple of people who appeared late in the diary — but I’ve also now added a lot more Montagus. There’s now a new chunk featuring the eminent family, Pepys’s distant relations, on the right-hand end. It’s quite a confusing family — there are several Edward Montagus for example — so having them displayed like this helps make things clearer!
The end of the diary got a few mentions in the on- and offline media, and here’s a brief summary of it. I didn’t go looking for publicity because, although it feels like a big event, there didn’t seem much point attracting lots of new readers to the site just as it ends!
Usually diary entries appear at 11pm UK time, sort of simulating the idea that Pepys wrote it at the end of his day. I’m loath to break with this near decade-long tradition, but Thursday’s entry will appear two hours early, at 9pm UK time. This is so that readers in the UK are more likely to be able to read it “live”, should they wish to do so. I hope this doesn’t spoil the routine of anyone too much!
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been going through my neglected list of things on the site I’ve been meaning to fix or add. Better (very) late than never! Here’s what I’ve been doing:
As we approach the end of the diary it would be great to read what your favourite moments from the diary are. Any particular phrases or events that have stuck in your head? Any especially memorable descriptions? If it’s a brief snippet, post it in a comment below, with a link to the diary entry. If you have an entire entry that you want to share, just post a link to it and tell us why you love it.
This coming Friday, 25 May, there’s a commemoration service at noon at St Olave’s church:
Some time ago Laura K suggested we have a roll call for readers of the diary to say hello. This seems like a good time.