The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Index: 11 - Hardcover

Pepys

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520020987 ISBN 13: 9780520020986

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

Samuel Pepys is as much a paragon of literature as Chaucer and Shakespeare. His Diary is one of the principal sources for many aspects of the history of its period. In spite of its significance, all previous editions were inadequately edited and suffered from a number of omissions - until Robert Latham and William Matthews went back to the 300-year-old original manuscript and deciphered each passage and phrase, no matter how obscure or indiscreet. The Diary deals with some of the most dramatic events in English history. Pepys witnessed the London Fire, the Great Plague, the Restoration of Charles II, and the Dutch Wars. He was a patron of the arts, having himself composed many delightful songs and participated in the artistic life of London. His flair for gossip and detail reveals a portrait of the times that rivals the most swashbuckling and romantic historical novels. In none of the earlier versions was there a reliable, full text, with commentary and notation with any claim to completeness. This edition, first published in 1970, is the first in which the entire diary is printed with systematic comment. This is the only complete edition available; it is as close to Pepys's original as possible.

About this title

Review:

"[Pepys] was not only Charles II's chief naval administrator, but a keen amateur of learning and an indefatigable enthusiast of politics, music, theater, women, life. He sets down his daily experience with a journalist's eye for detail, something of a novelist's sensitivity and, since he is writing for himself, a delightful frankness."--"Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover:

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633, the son of a tailor. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1655 he married, and the following year he entered the household of his cousin Admiral Edward Montagu. In 1660 he begun writing his Diary. With his unquenchable joy in life and his endless curiosity, Pepys gave a vivid first-hand account of the 1660's – the colourful years of the Restoration, the Plague and the Great Fire of London – interwoven with a richly diverting record of his eventful private and domestic life. After just ten years, in May 1669, he closed his Diary, never realizing the historical and literary importance it would attain.

Samuel Pepys's diary was first published in abbreviated form in 1825, over a century after his death in 1703. A succession of new versions brought out in the Victorian era made Pepys one of the best known figures of English history. However, not until the publication of the Latham and Matthews edition was the diary presented in its complete form, with a newly transcribed text and the benefit of a systematic commentary. The text of the Diary is in nine volumes, followed by a Companion and an index. The edition has just become established as the definitive version, hailed by'The Times' as 'one of the glories of contemporary English publishing' and by C.P. Snow as 'a triumph of modern scholarship.'

"A memorial fit for our greatest diarist"
SPECTATOR

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0520020987
• ISBN 13: 9780520020986
• Binding: Hardcover