An amazing read - thoroughly engrossing, an extraordinarily complete and researched piece of work but never ever a moment where it was tough going - enthralling and as others have said left you feeling bereft when you had finished it. Genius - indeed have now read others of Tomalin's books - Jane Austen and The Other Woman (Nell - Dicken's mistress) and both intensely human while never sacrificing accuracy and honesty.

Thorough, thorough, thorough.

Exhaustive, exhaustive, exhaustive.

Illuminating, educating, insightful.

Narrative, entertaining, if dense.

Recommended for those who have intrigue for the age of the Scientific Revolution, English civil war, inflamed religious sparring, stench, gender injustice and lords and commoners of intense political ambition.

The layperson may find that it would have been well-served to be edited in length by about one-third.

Long, long, long. ( )

what a lecherous man - those poor women in his life

A wonderful biography that informs as well as entertains. Samuel Pepys is interpreted through his own writings - warts and all. He lived a long life during a tumultous time in English history - the beheading of Charles I, Cromwell and then Restoration. Fascinating polital manoevres, as well as personal dramas. Claire Tomalin is a wonderful biography writer. ( )

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is the most famous diarist in English letters. From 1660 to 1669, he penned a day-by-day description of Restoration London, with its disasters (the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666), its tumultuous politics and its amazing cultural fervour. Pepys's diary also describes his eager womanizing, as he makes passes, often clumsily, at barmaids and shop girls and the wives of his associates. It is Pepys's intermingling of the public and the private that makes his diary so remarkable. Tomalin (Jane Austin: A Life, etc.) really knows her man, following him closely through some of the great events of English history. As a young government clerk, Pepys allied himself with his cousin Edward Montagu, who turned away from Cromwell to help Charles II become king in 1660, and the Restoration made Pepys's career. Highly organized, intelligent and a savvy political infighter, as Tomalin portrays him, he became a leading navy official and helped build the British navy into a world power. Tomalin also brings us inside Pepys's personal life: his tempestuous marriage, his romantic liaisons, his private, quite negative feelings about King Charles II. Tomalin, biographer of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, goes beyond Pepys's diary years to examine his entire life.

Claire Tomalin's Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self is quite simply one of the best reads in history, biography or any other genre in a long time. It deservedly carried off the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002. Pepys lived through the tumultuous changes of the 17th century from Charles I to the Commonwealth and back to Charles II and James II and finally through the Glorious Revolution that brought the Dutch William III to the English crown. That century contained plagues, the great London fire, revolution, counterrevolution, and the emergence of science. Pepys experienced it all and for some 9 years wrote a comprehensive, perceptive, and extremely candid diary.

Tomalin's story rather naturally divides into three parts: pre-diary years, the diary years from 1660-1669, and the post-diary years when Pepys reached his greatest heights and suffered his greatest losses, personal and professional. In the first and last parts Tomalin gives us an excellent if fairly standard biography, but one informed by the incredible detail and honesty of the diary years.

When the reader reaches the end of the diary years one feels a sense of deprivation, a sense almost of being cheated. Pepys has drawn the curtain closed and we are no longer privy to the intimate details of Pepys daily activities at court, in the street, in the bedroom. Tomalin's own sense of loss is palpable.

Pepys began life as the son of London tailor and managed to reach the highest levels of English government as an advisor to kings by dint of hard work and obsequious obeisance to a number of benefactors, beginning with Edward Montague. An assiduous rump smoocher was he. Along the way he switched from being a supporter of Cromwell and Parliament to backing Charles II and James II. As a high-level naval official he instituted many practices that made the Royal Navy the greatest in the world. Unfortunately for Pepys, Charles II was a wastrel and James II an open Catholic whose religion cost him his crown. His connection to them cost him some time in the Tower of London.

There are many diaries, but few that are as perceptive and honest as Pepys' or as fruitful at sweeping in the details of daily life in mid-1600s England. According to Tomalin, Pepys diary gives more detail about the life of young working class girls and women, the maids, cooks, and serving girls, as almost any other source. Pepys also had a strong appetite for women and he did not hesitate to use his position to get what he desired, which he also details in his diary.

Pepys' diary and his own achievements show him as a remarkably energetic man with a strongly curious mind. Although not a scientist himself Pepys had a curious mind and also belonged to the Royal Society serving a term as its president. Pepys displays a willingness to work and to fawn as necessary in order to advance. The diary also shows him as a frequent sexual harasser (although his behavior may have been within the norms of the day at least as far as the men were concerned). And while he excelled at his work, he also was not above taking a bit of an "inducement" on the side. We would call these payments bribes, but Pepys seems to have viewed them more like service charges and he seems not to have acted contrary to the navy's best interests. These bribes were usually in pound notes (often sizeable), but he also had a long-running arrangement with a ship's captain for free access to the sexual favors of the captain's wife (Her name: Mrs. Bagwell!).

What is truly remarkable is that we know all these things and know them to be true for a certainty only because Pepys wrote them in his diary, a diary that it is generally believed Pepys fully intended to be publicly read some day (he included the six volumes in his library that he bequeathed it to Magdalene College, Cambridge).

Highest recommendation. ( )

A biography of one of the world's most famous diarists. Drawing mostly from his own writings, and explaining them in the context of the times, I was truly drawn into Restoration England. London was portrayed as a dirty city and Pepys as a rather chauvinistic man, but I ended up quite liking the city and the man anyway. There's a graphic description of surgery in that time period that might put you off your lunch, so dieters, enjoy! ( )

4035 Samuel Pepys The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomakin (read 12 June 2005) I read a biography of Jane Austen by this author on 26 Apr 1998 and liked it much, so I decided to read this. Pepys was born Feb 23, 1633 in London and died at 3:47 AM on May 26, 1703. This book is a masterful biography and won the 2002 Whitbread biography prize--I have read seven of such winners and all have been worthwhile reading: King George V, by Kenneth Rose (read 22 July 1984), a bio of T. S. Eliot by Peter Ackroyd (read 8 May 1994), Gladstone, by Roy Jenkins (read 19 Apr 1997), Victor Hugo, by Graham Robb (read 27 Nov 1998), Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West, by Victoria Glendinning (read 1 Oct 1999), and Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman (read 7 May 2000). Pepys was not an admirable character because of his private life, exposed in detail by his meticulous diary, kept in code from 1660 to 1668. That diary is a priceless insight into his times. This book is well-done, the notes and bibliography and 'List of Principal Figures' so full that one stands in admiration of the great work done by Tomakin. I did not always find the book super-interesting, but the accounts of the Great Fire of London in 1666, and of the Plague Year, the return of Charles II in 1660, and the 1688 revolution were highly dramatic and things with which Pepys was much concerned. A really worth reading biography. ( )

An excellent survey and meditation on the great diarist Pepys. This in Pepys uncut; Tomlin does not spare us his lust, vanity, or all too convenient doublethink. We love him all the more for it, because this man was also insatiably curious, inexhaustible, intelligent, and shockingly, wonderfully candid. The book provides a good foundation to the excellent pepysdiary.com. ( )

My favourite subject in history is 17th century England, ten years ago, when almost every book seemed to be set in Elizabethan or Victorian times, there wasn't much to read. Times have changed and so many history books, biographies and novels are set in and around the Restoration that I cannot keep up.

This book is one of the best I have read, Tomalin uses many sources, and gives as good an account of the times through which Pepyss lived as any I have found. The diary is bound to dominate all books about Pepys, and quite rightly as it is such an unusual and compelling work. The book certainly buzzes more when it covers the diary years , but held my interest throughout.

The book is laid out in a broadly chronological way, dealing with the different "ages", but within each broad age is broken down in to subjects, such as politics, war, money and so on. This causes some repetion but allows Tomalin to bring in other contemporary sources that shed more light on Pepys world and I thought the technique worked well.

One of the central questions about Pepys is, why did he write those diaries? They are candid, unpublishable in his lifetime (and written in code to avoid discovery) and yet Pepys makes no attempt to cast himself in a good light, I think Tomalin believes he was engaged in an act of self discovery, he was fascinated by knowledge, science and human behavior and was widely read and President of the Royal Society, so that all seems quite plausible to me.

I didn't dislike Pepys, as other reviewers did, he wasn't a "nice" person, but who of us is? ( )

I must chime in with the previous reviews - without, if possible, rehashing them! Compliments to my predecessors - particularly antimuzak and nwhyte - on covering the basic ground. As regards quality, we are all agreed. Absorbing and admirable, Tomalin's biography adds much-needed context to the few years of the Diary's span, carrying us into the years beyond. It functions beautifully as an introduction to Pepys (my own purpose), as well as the more obvious companion volume to diary reading. She gives enough detail on the diary years that a first-time reader would (I think) feel well-oriented; yet not so much as could possibly 'ruin' it.

Tomalin's strength, as others have noted, rests in her research and her tone. She treats her subject with a brilliantly balanced love and objectivity: neither demonizing him for his faults, nor afraid or unwilling to censure, she also clearly appreciates his achievements and abilities. From Tomalin, the biography gains a tempered warmth, a cool humanity; a beautifully marshalled research; and imaginative entry into unrecorded life, which never seems to venture too far. Her prose is clear, yet fine.

Though aware generally of Pepys' importance in Navy administration, I found the chapters after the diary, and the details of his further rise, innovations, struggles, and scandals, fascinating and invaluable.

Perhaps one of the biography's greatest pleasures, for me, was not confined to the book itself, though it may redound credit on Tomalin, for her handling and contextualization. Having read a fair clutch of biographies and history from the same period, as I read I am not only seeing Pepys' life thread through history I know well (and for which he is a common source) - as through a crowded avenue, past familiar landmarks - but watching his jostling in the crowd, eager and alert, with acquaintances of my own. The sense of his milieu in the biography is strong, certainly in the later years; but so is the beauty of connections which layered reading brings. ( )

I rarely read biographies but enjoyed this one so much I bought it for my shelves.
Her writing made the period he lived in come alive and clearly explained the context of his diary writings in terms of his career and life. My only wish is that more of his diary entries were in there, rather than footnoted when relevant.

Her writing came across as well researched, and was very pleasant for a non-Pepys-expert to read. However friends who've studied him at tertiary level found this biography rewarding also. ( )

A very good book to savour. I read it after having read a compressed, 3-volume edition of the Diary. The Diary is sometimes difficult to understand. With Claire Tomalin's book, everything is now clear! (Or at least much clearer.) Next step for me: read the full version of the Diary...
My only regret is that there was not much description of the shorthand used by Pepys. I tried to understand the first page of the Diary, which the present book gives in both shorthand & longhand, but it would have been interesting to know a bit more about the technique. A brilliant work anyway! ( )

An object lesson in the fine art of objective and well researched biography ( )

http://steevc.multiply.com/reviews/it... ( )

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is the most famous diarist in English letters. From 1660 to 1669, he penned an unforgettable day-by-day description of Restoration London, with its disasters (the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666), its tumultuous politics and its amazing cultural fervor. Pepys's diary also describes his eager womanizing, as he makes passes, often clumsily, at barmaids and shop girls and the wives of his associates. It is Pepys's intermingling of the public and the private that makes his diary so remarkable. Tomalin (Jane Austin: A Life, etc.) really knows her man, following him closely through some of the great events of English history. As a young government clerk, Pepys allied himself with his cousin Edward Montagu, who turned away from Cromwell to help Charles II become king in 1660, and the Restoration made Pepys's career. Highly organized, intelligent and a savvy political infighter, as Tomalin portrays him, he became a leading navy official and helped build the British navy into a world power. Tomalin also brings us inside Pepys's personal life: his tempestuous marriage, his romantic liaisons, his private, quite negative feelings about King Charles II. Tomalin writes brilliant chapters on all aspects of Pepys's life, relying not only on the diary but also on impressive scholarship. Tomalin clearly admires her subject, whose energy she constantly praises. For those who have already enjoyed the diary, Tomalin's learned and entertaining work admirably fills in the gaps.

Tomalin, biographer of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, goes beyond Pepys's diary years to examine his entire life.

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This book richly deserves all the praise it has received. I was aware that Pepys was a senior naval civil servant who dabbled in science (he was President of the Royal Society when it published Newton's Principia so his name is on the title page) and famously kept a secret diary. (The Secret Diary of Samuel Pepys, aged 26-35???) But Tomalin makes him really come alive.

The early period, when Pepys witnessed civil war in the streets of London, and truanted from school to watch King Charles I's head being cut off, is superbly depicted, as is the story of how he used distant family connections to climb away from his humble origins (his father was a tailor, his mother a laundrywoman). Then we follow him through the uncertain times of Cromwell, a hasty (and ultimately childless) marriage to a fourteen-year-old bride, and then the dramatic year of 1660, when suddenly everything goes right for him; he starts keeping a diary on January 1st and within a few weeks he is chatting to Charles II on the boat bringing him back to England to retake the throne.

For the 1660s, of course, Tomalin is helped by the existence of Pepys' diary. The political stuff is fascinating, and as an aspirant on that career path myself I would make this compulsory reading for all young wannabee statesman. Among other jewels, Pepys is the man who tells the King that the Great Fire of London has broken out in 1666. And he intermingles love, politics, mistresses, religion, illness, friendship into what can rapidly become an addictive combination. The diary lay hidden in plain view in Magdalen College Cambridge for a century and a half after his death before it was decoded; a full version, leaving in all the naughty bits, wasn't published until the 1970s.

The post-1669 story is inevitably a bit flatter, because mostly gained from secondary sources. (Pepys stopped keeping a diary because he was worried that he was losing his sight, though in fact he had no real problems with it in the remaining thirty-four years of his life.) Even so, he gets elected to Parliament, imprisoned in the Tower of London, demolishes the British naval base at Tangier in Morocco, publishes Newton's Principia and rapidly acquires a new permanent lady friend after his wife dies. Tomalin leaves us with a sympathetic but honest portrait of a man who saw his entire world (a world which actually didn't extend very far out of London) change in his lifetime, and left us a unique chronicle of what he thought about it. Strongly recommended, to anyone who likes a good story. ( )