Originally published in 1933, this book presents the content of 56 shorthand, or partly shorthand, letters by Samuel Pepys, transcribed in full and edited by Edwin Chappell. The letters were derived from a volume entitled S. Pepys' Official Correspondence 1662-1679, which came into the possession of the National Maritime Museum in 1931, having been sold at auction by the Pepys-Cockerell family along with four other volumes of hitherto privately owned letters. The period covered is roughly that of the Second Dutch War, with the first letter dated as 20th September 1664 and the last 30th March 1668. Detailed notes are incorporated throughout and a list of works quoted is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the correspondence of Pepys and British history.

The correspondence included here represents the first selection of Pepys's letters drawn from all possible sources to be published since 1933. Since the Diary does not cover this period, the letters enable the reader to follow Pepys' early career on the staff of the Earl of Sandwich, his rise to greatness as Secretary of the Admiralty, and his retirement after the Glorious Revolution. Along the way Pepys fought battles with opponents of his naval reforms and enemies who tried to implicate him in the Popish Plot, while taking care of his various relatives and keeping up with an array of friends and acquaintances who included many of the great and famous of late-seventeenth-century England. The letters have been chosen to reflect all these aspects of Pepys's varied and fascinating life, and include 30 never before published. They are accompanied by a running commentary, biographies of persons mentioned, a glossary, a chronology, and an introduction that explains how the letters have survived and analyses how they were written.BR>Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and archaeologist with numerous books to his credit. His specialist field is Roman Britain but he has published three books for Boydell on the 'other' seventeenth-century diarist, John Evelyn (1620-1706), including the widely-acclaimed Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn which features all the letters exchanged by the two men over a period of 38 years.

The first major socio-cultural study of manuscript letters and letter-writing practices in early modern England. Daybell examines a crucial period in the development of the English vernacular letter before Charles I's postal reforms in 1635, one that witnessed a significant extension of letter-writing skills throughout society.

"Samuel Pepys' FRS, MP, JP, (pron.: /pi?ps/;[1] 23 February 1633? 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.[2] The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and 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."--Wikipedia

For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language. Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepys’s early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepys’s singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death.

The editors went back to Pepys' original 300-year-old manuscript to reconstruct a complete edition of his "Diary" which deals with some of the most dramatic events in English history: the London Fire, the Great Plague, the Restoration of Charles II, and the Dutch Wars. "One of the glories of contemporary English publishing."--Michael Ratcliffe, "The Times." 11 illustrations. 5 maps.

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633, the son of a tailor. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1655 he married, and the following year he entered the household of his cousin Admiral Edward Montagu. In 1660 he began writing his Diary. With his unquenchable joy in life and his endless curiosity, Pepys gave a vivid first-hand account of the 1660s -- the colourful years of the Restoration, the Plague and the Great Fire of London -- interwoven with a richly diverting record of his eventful private and domestic life. After just ten years, in May 1669, he closed his Diary, never realizing the historical and literary importance it would attain.

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633, the son of a tailor. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1655 he married, and the following year he entered the household of his cousin Admiral Edward Montagu. In 1660 he began writing his Diary. With his unquenchable joy in life and his endless curiosity, Pepys gave a vivid first-hand account of the 1660s - the colourful years of the Restoration, the Plague and the Great Fire of London - interwoven with a richly diverting record of his eventful private and domestic life. After just ten years, in May 1669, he closed his Diary, never realizing the historical and literary importance it would attain.