The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) remains one of the greatest works of personal prose writing in the English language. Offering insights into politics, reviewing theatrical and musical performances, and chronicling Pepys\u2019 loves and lusts, the diary offers a unique record of a man and nation at the end of the 17th century. This book by Loveman, a British scholar, tells the fascinating story of how Pepys developed a secret shorthand to encode his thoughts, how the text was discovered and deciphered at the beginning of the 19th century, and how the diary, still today, shocks and inspires. During the Victorian age, it had an indelible impact on the changing notions of what it meant to be English at the time. \u201cTo imagine Victorian England through the eyes of Pepys meant enjoying English eccentricities and appreciating continuities with the past,\u201d Loveman writes. Pepys\u2019 famous description of the 1666 Great Fire of London shaped a sense of tragedy and adventure for generations. Of course, the most salacious parts of the diary were excised for decades, and it wasn\u2019t until editions of the late 20th century were published that readers could find \u201cevery last obscenity\u201d in all its glory. Today, the diary still resonates. Pepys\u2019 explicitly recorded sexual exploits creepily anticipate the wandering hands of modern-day transgressors. We also experience natural disasters through his eyes; Loveman quotes a Southern California man who, evacuating from a fire in 2009, thought of \u201cSam taking the money, plate and \u2018best things\u2019\u201d and feeling what \u201cSam must have felt when he saw the pigeons fall.\u201d Pepys lived the most vivid of lives, and the beauty and horror of his time speak to our own.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) remains one of the greatest works of personal prose writing in the English language. Offering insights into politics, reviewing theatrical and musical performances, and chronicling Pepys\u2019 loves and lusts, the diary offers a unique record of a man and nation at the end of the 17th century. This book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}