A set of one liners: These quotations were collected from the eight volumes of the Diary of Samuel Pepys by David Widger while preparing etexts for Project Gutenberg. Comments and suggestions will be most welcome. Cameo of SP and cover of Henry B.Wheatley 1893 original, This reference is about quotes he is remembered by: also a wood cut print of the better half, and more of Sam in various poses. http://gutenberg.net.au/widger/pe…
Arthur Bryant trilogy. I highly recommend them. The Man in the Making - Early years and diary years The Years of Peril - post diary to about 1680 The Saviour of the Navy - 1680 to 1689 AB had planned a 4th to cover SP's retirement, but never managed it. The Man in the Making is both: (1) an excellent commentary on the diary - giving added detail, explanation and insight into many events; (2) a good, concise alternative to the diary for those who find it heavy-going. The 2nd and 3rd books are well-researched, drawing from SP's correspondence and later diaries. The Years of Peril is a joy, with a detailed and gripping account of SP's near-demise in the 'Popish Plot'. The Saviour of the Navy establishes SP's true greatness and power in later years, completing with an interesting, but over detailed account of the Glorious Revolution. All availabe in many second-hand bookshops and on Amazon. I wholly agree with this review (John Harding): http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
"Samuel Pepys In the Diary" by Percival Hunt is an original and enchanting collection of "papers" regarding assorted themes and thoughts presented in the diary. A few of the subjects include: Pepys Day, Principal Officer, Plaque, Great Fire, Pepys Songs, Catherine of Braganza, Letter of Great Reproof, Morality, One Value of the Diary to Pepys, Two Dinners, Pepys and Elizabeth Pepys. Hunt's style offers a gently mature and holistic look of the diary-stepping back from the day to day and putting it into perspective as a growing and maturation process for Sam over the lifetime of the diary. He doesn't let him off the hook for his faults, but rather looks at how these faults play into the larger picture of Sam's private and public life (which were totally different aspects of the same man). One of the more interesting and simple essays was called "Two Dinners". It was a contrast of a dinner party given by Sam and Elizabeth on January 26, 1660 and then one on January 22, 1669. It was amazing that by presenting these 2 entries side by side that so many aspects of Sam's upward growth and sophistication come to life. I've placed this with the biographies as it does select certain aspects of Sam's life and character. This is a great read and easy to pick up and read as time permits as each essay stands perfectly well on its own.
An enthusiastic endorsement of Jeannine's find, Hunt's 'Samuel Pepys in the Diary.' Hunt is a lively and succinct writer, with fine powers of synthesis. The centerpiece of the book is a thirty-page in-depth consideration of the relationship between Pepys, Sir William Penn, Lady Penn, and their son William Penn, the Quaker that is to be. Even more searching, however, are the short chapters on Pepys's moral sense, and his ability to compartmentalize his concerns; on his use of the Diary as a safety valve for his emotions; Pepys's "great letter of reproof" to Lord Sandwich about the gossip round town concerning the latter's mistress; and, most touchingly, his analysis of the marriage of "Pepys and Elizabeth Pepys," inasmuch as any relation between two people can be divined by someone standing outside his. Hunt is a man of the world -- this book was written a decade after his retirement from teaching at university for forty-one years -- and he couples intense attention to detail with a masterful overview of the larger picture. (To give just two: Elizabeth Pepys's portrait portrayed her with the attributes of St. Catherine as a tribute to Queen Catherine -- who also receives her own verbal portrait here. And after everything Pepys saw during the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire the very next year, in September 1666 he found himself "much terrified in the nights now-a-days with dreams of fire, and falling down of houses" and "burning the rest of the town" -- showing that post-traumatic stress was not invented in our own century. Hunt also gives, in the front of his book, a list of pertinent "DATES" which I will reproduce separately, so that you can Copy it onto a page of your own for easy consultation -- such as when you want to remind yourself just how old Pepys is at the time of writing.) Anyone who follows the Diary site will find Hunt fascinating, and want to recommend his book to others. Thanks again to Jeanine.
* Postscript: The dust jacket blurb "About the Author" says that "Although he retired from teaching a decade ago, daily, in his office high up in the Cathedral of Learning, [Hunt] studies, reads, writes, advises young writers, and visits with his many friends, former students and colleagues." Just when you're about to say, "They don't write 'em like that anymore," you see on the back flap that the University of Pittsburgh Press was then housed in the "Cathedral of Learning," inasmuch as it is the second tallest education building in the world, and the heart of the U of P campus: http://www.umc.pitt.edu:16080/tou…
DATES from Percival Hunt, "Samuel Pepys in the Diary," University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958.
Lord Sandwich born: May 28, 1625 Pepys born: February 23, 1633 Elizabeth Le Marchant de St. Michel born: October 23, 1640 Pepys at St. Paul's School: 1643 [?] - 1650 Charles I executed: January 30, 1649 Pepys at Cambridge: March 1651 - October 1653 Pepys married (Civil Ceremony, December 1): October 10, 1655 Diary begun: January 1, 1660 The Restoration (Charles II lands at Dover): May 25, 1660 Pepys became Clerk of the Acts: July 13, 1660 Dutch defeated: June 3, 1664 The Plague: 1665 The Great Fire: September, 1666 Diary ended: May 31, 1669 Samuel Pepys: February 23, 1633 - May 26, 1703 Elizabeth Pepys: October 23, 1640 - November 10, 1669
Dirk says Questia offers a free online read of "Samuel Pepys In the Diary" -- not really:
Re Questia: once entirely a subscription service, "Questia offers free access to the first page of every chapter in a book and the first paragraph of each article for your review." then requires a subscription: http://www.questia .com/PM.qst?a=refresh&docId=5711957&type=book There are various plans: http://www.questia.com/Registrati…
Questia's free access is comparable to Amazon's for many books, though not this one (either in the US or the UK).
"Samuel Pepys and his Cookbooks" An interesting article by Roy Schreiber (Indiana University South Bend) and a fun read. Perhaps our beloved Sam was a "closet chef" at heart.... http://flan.utsa.edu/conviviumart…
"Pepys and his Cookbooks": Jeannine, once again we all are in your debt for digging up a most informative article, which sheds light not only on Sam's behavior in the Diary but to the end of his life. Two of Schreiber's points especially struck me: "Even [Pepys's] sexual pursuits, extensive as they were, did not get the kind of treatment [in the Diary] that food did." Well, perhaps not. After all, Gentle Reader, even Sam---like you and me---may not have a daily dalliance to report, but unless you're in hospital with "N per Os" on your chart, you're more than likely to chow down more than once diurnally. And: For "the middle-class Londoners of [Pepys's] period," "The goal was, with the exception of areas in which the master or mistress of the house had talents and interests, to have servants do as much of the physical work as possible." Might this expectation persist yet today, having migrated up the class ladder?
"His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation."
Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man—a conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are?"
Samuel Pepys His Diary, and the world he lived in by Dr Judson Sykes Bury (1852-1944) Published in the Manchester Medical School Gazette, Vol. XIV, May 1933. .... The article is in two parts - (1) matters is the Diary that are "more than a little of medical interest" - (a) his own ailments; (b) his general observations about health and disease; (c) what he recorded about the London Plague of 1665; (2) His Personal Characteristics. which is fair and balanced. http://pages.zoom.co.uk/leveridge…
"The Plot Against Pepys' by James Long and Ben Long is a highly detailed, painstaking and fascinating account of the minutiae of the plot, its disparate cast of characters and the race against the legal Calendar that Pepys and his supporters were forced to engage in.
paperback published by faber & faber; currently £9.99 rrp
19 Annotations
First Reading
Phil • Link
The essential companion to the diary itself is Claire Tomalin's informative and enjoyable biography, 'Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self':
UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos…
Phil • Link
Robert Louis Stevenson's essay on Samuel Pepys is available free here: http://www.bartleby.com/28/12.html
vicente • Link
A set of one liners:
These quotations were collected from the eight volumes of the Diary of Samuel Pepys by David Widger while preparing etexts for Project Gutenberg. Comments and suggestions will be most welcome.
Cameo of SP and cover of Henry B.Wheatley 1893 original, This reference is about quotes he is remembered by: also a wood cut print of the better half, and more of Sam in various poses.
http://gutenberg.net.au/widger/pe…
Sjoerd • Link
Stephen Coote's "Samuel Pepys: a life"
gives an "uncluttered" biography and puts reading the diary entries in perspective.
In the introduction the author states the biography was more or less a by-product of his book "Royal Survivor", on Charles II.
A lot of information is given about the post-diary years, the popish plot and the political background. Not as absorbing as the Tomalin I found.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
PHE • Link
Arthur Bryant trilogy. I highly recommend them.
The Man in the Making - Early years and diary years
The Years of Peril - post diary to about 1680
The Saviour of the Navy - 1680 to 1689
AB had planned a 4th to cover SP's retirement, but never managed it.
The Man in the Making is both: (1) an excellent commentary on the diary - giving added detail, explanation and insight into many events; (2) a good, concise alternative to the diary for those who find it heavy-going. The 2nd and 3rd books are well-researched, drawing from SP's correspondence and later diaries. The Years of Peril is a joy, with a detailed and gripping account of SP's near-demise in the 'Popish Plot'. The Saviour of the Navy establishes SP's true greatness and power in later years, completing with an interesting, but over detailed account of the Glorious Revolution. All availabe in many second-hand bookshops and on Amazon. I wholly agree with this review (John Harding): http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
Jeannine • Link
"Samuel Pepys In the Diary" by Percival Hunt is an original and enchanting collection of "papers" regarding assorted themes and thoughts presented in the diary. A few of the subjects include: Pepys Day, Principal Officer, Plaque, Great Fire, Pepys Songs, Catherine of Braganza, Letter of Great Reproof, Morality, One Value of the Diary to Pepys, Two Dinners, Pepys and Elizabeth Pepys. Hunt's style offers a gently mature and holistic look of the diary-stepping back from the day to day and putting it into perspective as a growing and maturation process for Sam over the lifetime of the diary. He doesn't let him off the hook for his faults, but rather looks at how these faults play into the larger picture of Sam's private and public life (which were totally different aspects of the same man). One of the more interesting and simple essays was called "Two Dinners". It was a contrast of a dinner party given by Sam and Elizabeth on January 26, 1660 and then one on January 22, 1669. It was amazing that by presenting these 2 entries side by side that so many aspects of Sam's upward growth and sophistication come to life. I've placed this with the biographies as it does select certain aspects of Sam's life and character. This is a great read and easy to pick up and read as time permits as each essay stands perfectly well on its own.
Amazon US http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos…
Amazon UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obid…
Used Book Websearch (cheapest option!) http://www.usedbooksearch.co.uk/b…
dirk • Link
"Samuel Pepys In the Diary"
This book is can be read online:
"Samuel Pepys in the Diary"
by Percival Hunt, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958
http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=r…
Bradford • Link
An enthusiastic endorsement of Jeannine's find, Hunt's 'Samuel Pepys in the Diary.' Hunt is a lively and succinct writer, with fine powers of synthesis. The centerpiece of the book is a thirty-page in-depth consideration of the relationship between Pepys, Sir William Penn, Lady Penn, and their son William Penn, the Quaker that is to be. Even more searching, however, are the short chapters on Pepys's moral sense, and his ability to compartmentalize his concerns; on his use of the Diary as a safety valve for his emotions; Pepys's "great letter of reproof" to Lord Sandwich about the gossip round town concerning the latter's mistress; and, most touchingly, his analysis of the marriage of "Pepys and Elizabeth Pepys," inasmuch as any relation between two people can be divined by someone standing outside his. Hunt is a man of the world -- this book was written a decade after his retirement from teaching at university for forty-one years -- and he couples intense attention to detail with a masterful overview of the larger picture. (To give just two: Elizabeth Pepys's portrait portrayed her with the attributes of St. Catherine as a tribute to Queen Catherine -- who also receives her own verbal portrait here. And after everything Pepys saw during the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire the very next year, in September 1666 he found himself "much terrified in the nights now-a-days with dreams of fire, and falling down of houses" and "burning the rest of the town" -- showing that post-traumatic stress was not invented in our own century. Hunt also gives, in the front of his book, a list of pertinent "DATES" which I will reproduce separately, so that you can Copy it onto a page of your own for easy consultation -- such as when you want to remind yourself just how old Pepys is at the time of writing.) Anyone who follows the Diary site will find Hunt fascinating, and want to recommend his book to others. Thanks again to Jeanine.
* Postscript: The dust jacket blurb "About the Author" says that "Although he retired from teaching a decade ago, daily, in his office high up in the Cathedral of Learning, [Hunt] studies, reads, writes, advises young writers, and visits with his many friends, former students and colleagues." Just when you're about to say, "They don't write 'em like that anymore," you see on the back flap that the University of Pittsburgh Press was then housed in the "Cathedral of Learning," inasmuch as it is the second tallest education building in the world, and the heart of the U of P campus: http://www.umc.pitt.edu:16080/tou…
Bradford • Link
DATES
from Percival Hunt, "Samuel Pepys in the Diary," University of Pittsburgh Press, 1958.
Lord Sandwich born: May 28, 1625
Pepys born: February 23, 1633
Elizabeth Le Marchant de St. Michel born: October 23, 1640
Pepys at St. Paul's School: 1643 [?] - 1650
Charles I executed: January 30, 1649
Pepys at Cambridge: March 1651 - October 1653
Pepys married (Civil Ceremony, December 1): October 10, 1655
Diary begun: January 1, 1660
The Restoration (Charles II lands at Dover): May 25, 1660
Pepys became Clerk of the Acts: July 13, 1660
Dutch defeated: June 3, 1664
The Plague: 1665
The Great Fire: September, 1666
Diary ended: May 31, 1669
Samuel Pepys: February 23, 1633 - May 26, 1703
Elizabeth Pepys: October 23, 1640 - November 10, 1669
Terry F • Link
Dirk says Questia offers a free online read of "Samuel Pepys In the Diary" -- not really:
Re Questia: once entirely a subscription service, "Questia offers free access to the first page of every chapter in a book and the first paragraph of each article for your review." then requires a subscription: http://www.questia .com/PM.qst?a=refresh&docId=5711957&type=book There are various plans: http://www.questia.com/Registrati…
Questia's free access is comparable to Amazon's for many books, though not this one (either in the US or the UK).
jeannine • Link
"Samuel Pepys and his Cookbooks"
An interesting article by Roy Schreiber (Indiana University South Bend) and a fun read. Perhaps our beloved Sam was a "closet chef" at heart....
http://flan.utsa.edu/conviviumart…
Bradford • Link
"Pepys and his Cookbooks": Jeannine, once again we all are in your debt for digging up a most informative article, which sheds light not only on Sam's behavior in the Diary but to the end of his life.
Two of Schreiber's points especially struck me:
"Even [Pepys's] sexual pursuits, extensive as they were, did not get the kind of treatment [in the Diary] that food did."
Well, perhaps not. After all, Gentle Reader, even Sam---like you and me---may not have a daily dalliance to report, but unless you're in hospital with "N per Os" on your chart, you're more than likely to chow down more than once diurnally.
And:
For "the middle-class Londoners of [Pepys's] period," "The goal was, with the exception of areas in which the master or mistress of the house had talents and interests, to have servants do as much of the physical work as possible."
Might this expectation persist yet today, having migrated up the class ladder?
TerryF • Link
A Fine extensive review of Claire Tomalin's "Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self’" and a biography of Pepys worth a read is:
Clara Claiborne Park
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Entrancing Ego: Samuel Pepys
The Hudson Review
Vol. LVIII, No. 3: AUTUMN 2005
http://www.hudsonreview.com/ParkS…
dirk • Link
"Among Famous Books", by John Kelman, 1912
Just released by Gutenberg Project
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18…
For the chapter on Samuel Pepys, link to:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18…
An extract (on Sam's religious life):
"His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He can lament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers God continually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals his last will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the liking of God Almighty." But in all this there is a curious consciousness, as of one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. On a fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mind of its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, and home to cards." He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a matter merely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, when in apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he will recover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adverse hours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentleman can easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires an audience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age is this, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playing the knave and dissimulation."
Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man wholly governed by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religion was simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscience enough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him within the limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man—a conscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We are constantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seems as if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things which he unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to which there is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why are all of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are?"
Terry F • Link
Samuel Pepys
His Diary, and the world he lived in
by Dr Judson Sykes Bury (1852-1944)
Published in the Manchester Medical School Gazette, Vol. XIV, May 1933.
....
The article is in two parts -
(1) matters is the Diary that are "more than a little of medical interest" - (a) his own ailments; (b) his general observations about health and disease; (c) what he recorded about the London Plague of 1665;
(2) His Personal Characteristics. which is fair and balanced. http://pages.zoom.co.uk/leveridge…
jeannine • Link
An update to teh cooking article quoted above-the url has changed
http://flan.utsa.edu/conviviumart…
Phil Gyford • Link
A review of the Claire Tomalin's 'An Unequalled Life' from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29…
Second Reading
Bill • Link
Francis Hueffer, "Mr. Pepys the Musician," in Italian and Other Studies, London, Elliot Stock, 1883. https://books.google.com/books?id…
Mary K • Link
"The Plot Against Pepys' by James Long and Ben Long is a highly detailed, painstaking and fascinating account of the minutiae of the plot, its disparate cast of characters and the race against the legal Calendar that Pepys and his supporters were forced to engage in.
paperback published by faber & faber; currently £9.99 rrp