| Format | Hardcover |
| Publication Date | 04/07/26 |
| ISBN | 9798897100743 |
| Trim Size / Pages | 6 x 9 in / 400 |
A remarkable collection of the most personal aspects of Samuel Pepys’ diaries, in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of their publication.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys is the most celebrated personal journal in the English language.
Pepys's candid revelations as he forged his career as a civilian naval official in Restoration London have fascinated readers ever since the first selection was published in 1825. This book focuses on Pepys’s controversial private life and is geared for a contemporary readership by charting his varied and complex relationships with women. These included his wife, Elizabeth—whom he both loved and treated abominably—their domestic servants, the mistresses whom he secretly visited in Westminster and Deptford, the great ladies of the court whom he ogled, and the actresses and other female friends whose company he delighted in and combined with casual flirting and petting. All these he recounted in shorthand, often disguising the more salacious occasions in his own cryptic Franco-Latino polyglot or with a primitive system of extraneous consonants.
Most of these controversial entries were excised from nineteenth century editions, but all are featured here in completely new transcriptions—with Pepys’s secret code translated—following fresh forensic examination from the original shorthand diary. The Confessions of Samuel Pepys also reveals how all previous transcribers of the diary, as well as many of his biographers, have deliberately avoided this controversial element of Pepys’s reputation.
Guy de la Be´doye`re has written a large several books on the Roman world, including Gladius; Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome; Praetorian; and The Real Lives of Roman Britain for Yale University Press. He is well known to a wide audience because of the fifteen years he participated in Britain’s Channel 4’s archaeology series, Time Team. Guy is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and is an accredited lecturer of the Arts Society. He lives in Britain.
Buy it now in print:
Buy it now in ebook:
“A brilliantly entertaining and revealing new transcription of Pepys's diary.” Claire Tomalin, bestselling author of The Young H. G. Wells and Charles Dickens
“A valuable, thought-provoking investigation of Pepys's writing." Kate Loveman, author of The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary
“This portrait of a deeply flawed man enhances our understanding of one of England's great diarists.” The Times (London)
“This newly explicit view of Pepys does not negate the continuing value of his diary—which remains a magnificent historical resource—but from now on it will be impossible to go to it in a state of innocence, let alone denial.” The Guardian
“Never less than compellingly readable. Adds so much to a fuller understanding of the man himself.” Irish Independent
“By compiling, translating, and commenting on the sections of the diary that focus on Pepys's personal life, he presents a powerful case for the prosecution. This portrait of a deeply flawed man enhances our understanding of one of England's great diarists.” Katherine Harvey, The Times (London)
