4.7
Open LibraryFirst lines
Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold.
About this book
Samuel Pepys (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament. The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Pepys recorded his daily life for almost ten years. Pepys has been called the greatest diarist of all time due to his frankness in writing concerning his own weaknesses and the accuracy with which he records events of daily British life and major events in the 17th century. Pepys wrote about the contemporary court and theater, his household, and major political and social occurrences. Historians have been using his diary to gain greater insight and understanding of life in London in the 17th century. Pepys wrote consistently on subjects such as personal finances, the time he got up in the morning, the weather, and what he ate. He talked at length about his new watch which he was very proud of (and which had an alarm, a new thing at the time), a country visitor who did not enjoy his time in London because he felt that it was too crowded, and his cat waking him up at one in the morning. Pepys's diary is one of the only known sources which provides such length in details of everyday life of an upper-middle-class man during the seventeenth century. His diary reveals his jealousies, insecurities, trivial concerns, and his fractious relations…
Themes & subjects
SourcesHistorySocial life and customsDiariesDiaristsCabinet officers
First published 1924Characters & people
Setting
Great BritainEnglandGrande-BretagneStuarts, 1603-1714Charles II, 1660-168517th centuryEarly modern, 1500-1700Restoration, 1660-1700Stuart, 1603-1714
About the author
Samuel Pepys
23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703
Samuel Pepys was born on February 23rd 1633 in Salisbury Court off Fleet Street. His father, John, was a tailor, his mother Margaret Kite was sister of a Whitechapel butcher and Samuel was fifth in a line of eleven children. His knowledge of shorthand, his political connections through Montagu (now Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty, having brought the King back from exile), and his subsequent government posts as one of the principal officers of the navy administration, gave him power and moderate wealth. His love of order and efficiency made him a man of some importance and he proudly and successfully addressed the Commons on naval matters. His [speech to the Commons on…
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