The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Volume II - 1661

Description

The second volume of the complete Diary of Samuel Pepys in its most authoritative and acclaimed edition. This complete edition of the Diary of Samuel Pepys comprises eleven volumes -- nine volumes of text and footnotes (with an introduction of 120 pages in Volume I), a tenth volume of commentary (The Companion) and an eleventh volume of Index. Each of the first eight volumes contains one whole calendar year of the diary, from January to December. The ninth volume runs from January 1668 to May 1669. The Diary was first published in abbreviated form in 1825. A succession of new editions, re-issues and selections, published in the Victorian era, made the Diary one of the best-known books, and Pepys one of the best-known figures, of English history. But in none of these versions -- not even in the Wheatley, which for long stood as the standard edition -- was there a reliable, still less a full text, and in none of them was there a commentary with any claim to completeness. This edition was in preparation for many years, and remains the first in which the entire Diary is printed and in which an attempt has been made at systematic comment on it. The primary aim of the principal editors was to see that the Diary was presented in a manner suitable to the historical and literary importance of its contents. At the same time they had in mind the interests of the wide public of English-speaking people to whom the diarist himself, rather than the importance of what he wrote, is what matters.

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633 and died in 1703. He was highly esteemed for his achievements as a public servant in the Admiralty, while in his private life he was known in intellectual circles as an accomplished musician and scholar. His greatest fame, however, lies in the shorthand diary he kept between 1660 and 1669. First published in 1825, the diary is a unique evocation of life in 17th-century London and remains one of the best-known and best-loved books in the English language.

'The Latham-Matthews transcription of Pepys' Diary is one of the glories of contemporary English publishing.' The Times 'The pleasure of Pepys -- of reading him -- is his own pleasure in experience... Pepys' Diary is the cheerful self-report, not of the man eminent in naval history, not of the historical witness, but of the unobjectionable hedonist.' Guardian 'Here, in one of the finest feats in all the long history of scholarship, is Pepys' Diary, once and for all. Exegi monumentum aere perennius.' Observer 'The editors have achieved the impossible... one can now read the Diary perfectly easily, month by month, year by year... here at last is a really learned edition where the learning is put at the disposal of the layman.' New Statesman 'It isn't often that one encounters a publication -- especially of this magnitude -- which achieves complete perfection, but there is no doubt that this does.' Sir Arthur Bryant