Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

Not Available / Digital Item

Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

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 Pepysâ€™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 Pepysâ€™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.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Country	USA
Author	Claire Tomalin
Binding	Kindle Edition
Edition	Reprint
EISBN	9780307427595
Format	Kindle eBook
Label	Vintage
Manufacturer	Vintage
NumberOfPages	528
PublicationDate	2007-12-18
Publisher	Vintage
ReleaseDate	2007-12-18
Studio	Vintage

You might also like...