Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 01: Preface and Life
1766
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 01: Preface and Life
1766
Translated by Mynors Bright
The most extraordinary private document in English literature, Pepys's diary was written in shorthand cipher and never meant for anyone else's eyes. That anonymity made him fearless. What survives is a portrait of 1660s England more vivid, more frankly alive, more disturbingly modern than any official history could capture. We witness the Restoration from the inside, the Great Plague's terror through a man who stays in London when everyone flees, the Great Fire as he watches his neighborhood burn. But Pepys is also obsessively tracking his own career advancement, cataloguing his amorous entanglements, complaining about his health, fretting over money, and lying awake at 3am listing his accomplishments. He is vain, ambitious, lustful, anxious, generous, curious, and utterly without self-pity. This is history without a filter, narrated by someone who had no idea he'd become immortal. Latham's abridged edition preserves the energy and wit that make reading Pepys feel less like homework and more like discovering a 17th-century man's secrets.
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“Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.””
— Samuel Pepys
“The truth is, I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and, out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, and then it is too late for them to enjoy it.””
— Samuel Pepys
“He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound.””
— Samuel Pepys
“And so to bed.””
— Samuel Pepys
“Great talk among people how some of the Fanatiques do say that the end of the world is at hand, and that next Tuesday is to be the day. Against which, whenever it shall be, good God fit us all!””
— Samuel Pepys
“I find it a hard matter to settle to business after so much leisure and pleasure.””
— Samuel Pepys
“Now public business takes up so much of my time that I must get time a Sundays or a nights to look after my own matters.””
— Samuel Pepys
“neighbour of ours, Mr. Hollworthy, a very able man, is also dead by a fall in the country from his horse, his foot hanging in the stirrup, and his brains beat out.””
— Samuel Pepys
“I saw the girl of the house, being very pretty, go into a chamber, and I went in after her and kissed her.””
— Samuel Pepys
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Pepys, Samuel. Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 01: Preface and Life. Lex, lex-books.com/book/diary-of-samuel-pepys-volume-01-preface-and-life-34818a4a-3933-4d69-80ff-e32027b92501.Pepys, S. (1766). Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 01: Preface and Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/diary-of-samuel-pepys-volume-01-preface-and-life-34818a4a-3933-4d69-80ff-e32027b92501Pepys, Samuel. Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 01: Preface and Life. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/diary-of-samuel-pepys-volume-01-preface-and-life-34818a4a-3933-4d69-80ff-e32027b92501.
