2024 Update
Here’s a quick look back at some figures from 2024, for anyone interested.
Site News
News about this site and other Pepys-related events.
Restoring Pepys's presses
Recently, Bainbridge Conservation, a London-based business, has been working on stabilising and repairing Pepys’s bookcases (or “presses” as he called them) at Magdalene College. They contain his thousands of books and manuscripts, and need to be moved temporarily during building works.
They documented some of the process on their Instagram account and have kindly allowed me to share the photos from the two posts here.
Samuel Pepys now available on Bluesky
You can now get updates from Pepys’ diary throughout the day if you use the Bluesky social networking app/website. Find him as @samuelpepys.bsky.social or at bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social.
Daily email problems (resolved)
Update: Buttondown have now fixed the issue and the email for 13th August was sent out successfully. If you expected to receive it but didn’t, email me.
If you’re subscribed to the daily diary emails you may have noticed there haven’t been any for the past three days. Apologies for this – I’ve contacted Buttondown’s support and am waiting to find out what’s gone wrong.
History News Network article about this site
The website History News Network has a fairly lengthy article, ‘Peeping on Pepys’ by Caroline Wazer about this site and its history. It’s surprisingly thorough, quoting many posts from Site News, and many annotations from across the diary’s readings. Worth a read, whether you’ve been around for a few months, years or decades!
A guide to Pepys's shorthand
Kate Loveman has written a very clear and useful guide to reading the shorthand in which Pepys wrote his diary, Tachygraphy. Scroll down that page to download the PDF guide for an insight into how Pepys wrote, and the work involved in translating his diary entries into modern English.
Update after 2023
A slightly belated Happy New Year to you all, and a quick update, one year into this third reading of the diary.
Shorter URLs in annotations
You might have noticed, when reading annotations on a screen with a narrow width, like a phone held vertically, that a handful of annotations were slightly mis-aligned and some of their text disappeared off the edge of the screen.
Pepys off Twitter
Today I’ve ceased the posting of tweets to the @samuelpepys Twitter account. I haven’t been happy using the service for a long time now, due to its current owner – and have stopped using it personally – but so many people enjoy Pepys on there that I didn’t want to deny them the pleasure.
Museum of London resources about Pepys
Kate posted this to the discussion list and I thought it was worth highlighting here – various new resources from the Museum of London that feature Pepys. They’re aimed at young children – around age 6 or 7 – and are focused on the Great Fire of London, deaf Londoners, and the shorthand that Pepys used.