Passages from the Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys

Narrated By: Fred Williams

Duration: 13 hours and 2 minutes

What to expect

"The diary which Samuel Pepys kept from January 1660 to May 1669…is one of our greatest historical records and…a major work of English literature," writes the renowned historian Paul Johnson.

A witness to the coronation of Charles II, the Great Plague of 1665, and the Great Fire of 1666, Pepys chronicled the events of his day. His diary provides an astonishingly frank and diverting account of political intrigues, naval, church, and cultural affairs, as well as a quotidian journal of daily life in London during the Restoration. Pepys' vivid, unconscious style, originally written in a cryptic shorthand, reveals an ideal witness: honest, unpretentious, and true.

Genre

Memoirs, Biography: general, Biography: historical, political and military, European history

Listen to a sample

“The bald truth about oneself, what we are all too timid to admit when we are not too dull to see it, that was what Pepys saw clearly and set down unsparingly.”

“Pepys led a full, varied and voraciously-enjoyed life and clearly took pleasure in setting it all down in plain words. Unlike most frantically busy men, he had remarkable powers of observation.”

“We can scarcely say that we wish it a page shorter…It is very entertaining thus to be transported into the very heart of a time so long gone by and to be admitted into the domestic intimacy, as well as the public councils, of a man of great activity and circulation in the reign of Charles II.”

“Alexander conquered the world; but Pepys, with a keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered a world for every sense.”