The Diary of Samuel Pepys - A Leisurely Daily Reading, Join as You Like

  

According to one publisher, the Diary of Samuel Pepys is one of the most entertaining documents in English history. Written between 1660 and 1669, as Pepys was establishing himself as a key administrator in the naval office, it is an intimate portrait of life in seventeenth-century England, covering his professional and personal activities, including, famously, his love of music, theatre, food, and wine and his peccadilloes. A few of us expressed some interest in reading the Complete Diary of Samuel Pepys, but since this is a monumental work, we though it best to approach it much as the man took on the task itself, that is, day by day, in small instalments to make the project seem less overwhelming. Everyone is welcome to join in and comment.

You may pick up any edition you like. Some of us will be reading Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin alongside the diaries or indeed, instead of them. Feel free to list and/or show which edition you'll be reading from as well as any recommendations you might have for additional reading materials on related subjects.

Some free online resources:

Project Gutenberg's Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete, by Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys Diary - www.pepys.info
Samuel Pepys' Diary - British Library
The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Daily entries from the 17th century London diary



Images above: Left: Portrait of Samuel Pepys by J. Hayls. Oil on canvas, 1666, 756 mm × 629 mm, Right: Elisabeth de St Michel, Pepys' wife. Stipple engraving by James Thomson, after a 1666 painting (now destroyed) by John Hayls.

Excellent! Looking forward to joining in, commenting, and hopefully learning a few things as we go :).

Edited to add: the Daily Pepys Diary Entries (the last link of Ilana's) is very helpful as it has added notations so you can reference what he's talking about. For example, he mentions 'Axe Yard' in his first entry, and when hovering over the name, we are informed - "Pepys and his wife lived in a house on this street, just south of modern-day Downing Street, in Westminster, from August 1658 to July 1660. "

Thanks for setting up the thread, Ilana and thanks for drawing my attention to the notes on the Daily Pepys, Jenny.

Another resource which gives some background to life in London during the period covered by Pepy's diaries is Restoration London by Liza Picard. She references Pepys' diaries quite a bit as well as relying on other sources.

I feel rather daunted by this project but am hoping that the day by day approach makes it seem more manageable. The Robert Latham edited edition of The diary of Samuel Pepys {1660} is waiting for me at the library.

I'm in... downloaded the Project Gutenberg version. I expect to go slowly, since I already have several book obligations (RL & ER) for the month.

Hello ladies, sorry I haven't given news. Life has been somewhat hectic and this project has somewhat fallen by the wayside. As I was just commenting to Heather on my own thread, I've sort of dropped off the Pepys project for the moment, simply because I realised I'd bitten off more than I could chew this month, especially with the Mansfield Park tutorial also taking place in March and I hadn't really though it through in terms of what the workload would be. Also, having listened to several days worth of entries of the audiobook version I got of the unabridged Pepys diaries, I quickly realised this was an amusing exercise as they are very funny to listen to (what with all his troubles with 'pissing, shitting and farting' he continually refers to many days in a row...), but quite useless in terms of information since I have no grasp whatsoever on British history, so I will have to read them (probably online) with annotations if I am to get the most out of them, which is rather more work than just listening casually. So I just have to readjust my thinking around that and really think in terms of just ONE entry per day... or two maybe. A very long-term project indeed! Eek!

>2 lunacat: Jenny, I went back to that site after I saw your comment and started reading the first entries again (after having listened to them and missed most of the information he was conveying) and found it very useful, thanks for pointing that out. I may use that as my reading tool as I find the Gutenberg site a tad overwhelming with almost too much information to take in sometimes, though of course I'm sure I'll want to refer to it as well.

>3 souloftherose: Heather, I've been wanting to get my hands on Restoration London by Liza Picard for quite some time now. Trouble is I want to get the Folio edition, mostly because well, it's *Folio*! :-) but also I think we discussed the fact that it contained more illustration than the paperback version currently available as well.

I wasn't feeling so daunted when I thought I could just go ahead and get through the diaries with the audio files, but then I obviously had no notion of what I was getting into if I thought I would be sufficiently provided for with that format. Boy was I ever WRONG!

>4 qebo: Katherine, slow will be the only way I'll be able to go with this project. As it is I'd gotten excited and 'read' a couple of week's worth of entries... make that listened to them, and amusing they were, but then of course I had no idea what he was talking about and missed all the references to people and events and any details whatsoever which the merest annotated text will provide you with. So I'm having to start over again. Not sure at this point whether I should keep the audiobooks at all. They are fun to listen to, but virtually useless to me really, other than as an addition to the text version.