Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 10: April/may 1661
Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 10: April/may 1661
Translated by Mynors Bright
April 1661. King Charles II is crowned in a city still reeling from revolution, and Samuel Pepys is everywhere: pressing through crowds to watch the coronation procession, dining with fellow naval clerks, quarreling with his father, sneaking to see plays his wife would never forgive him for, and writing it all down in a diary no one was ever meant to see. This volume captures Pepys at his most vivid. He records the restored monarchy's glittering pageantry while also documenting the smaller anxieties that consume him: money troubles, office politics at the Navy Board, whether his new coat fits properly. He is vain, curious, occasionally awful, and endlessly fascinating. He admits to lust and jealousy, to boredom in church, to spending money he doesn't have on books and music. Three and a half centuries later, he reads like a friend. The diary survives as both confession and chronicle. Pepys offers an unparalleled window into Restoration London: the smell of the Thames, the buzz of coffeehouses, the tension between old Puritans and new royalists. But what elevates it beyond historical document is his frank, often funny self-scrutiny. He is the first modern English writer who truly sounds like a person.
