The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys was born in London on February 23, 1633, and died there on May 26, 1703. Despite coming from humble stock as the son of a tailor, Pepys rose to become a highly influential public figure in 17th-century England. He attended St. Paul’s School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained B.A. and M.A. degrees but was also reprimanded for drunken behavior. Pepys began his professional life working as a servant to Admiral Edward Montagu, who was his cousin and plays a key role in the Diary as Pepys’s patron and “lord.”

In 1655 Pepys married Elizabeth de St. Michel, the 15-year-old daughter of a French Huguenot refugee. Pepys’s early married life and his rise in the English government are chronicled in the Diary. From a servant, he progressed to being a clerk in the Navy office, then Treasurer of the Navy. When starting his various jobs Pepys typically lacked knowledge of anything pertaining to them (as he himself admits in the Diary), yet through persistence and application he quickly became master of his various duties.

The Diary ends before the most notable period of Pepys’s public service. In 1673, after Elizabeth had died of an illness at the age of 29, Pepys was appointed Head of the Admiralty; for the next several years he concentrated on stamping out corruption in the Navy and strengthening English sea power. In 1678 Pepys was falsely accused of being involved in the (entirely fictional) Popish Plot to take over the government and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Thanks to the intervention of Charles II, Pepys’s name was cleared, and he returned to his former post, serving both Charles and the succeeding king, James II. Pepys is widely credited with rebuilding the structure of the British Navy and imbuing it with greater order and discipline. Pepys died at the age of 70 in the house of his longtime servant Will Hewer, who figures prominently in the Diary.

Pepys consorted with some of the most notable personalities in English society of his day, and thus was able to fill the Diary with observations of historical interest to future generations of readers. In addition to his political duties, he took an interest in the arts and learning—he had a library containing over 3,000 volumes—and knew and corresponded with leading artists, scientists, and men of letters. Another factor that makes the Diary an enduring work of literature is his humor and zest for life, by which Pepys “almost persuades us that we are sharing his life” (The Illustrated Pepys).