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 #8217;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 #8217;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. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is the most famous diarist in English letters. From 1660 to 1669, he penned an unforgettable day-by-day description of Restoration London, with its disasters (the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666), its tumultuous politics and its amazing cultural fervor. Pepys's diary also describes his eager womanizing, as he makes passes, often clumsily, at barmaids and shop girls and the wives of his associates. It is Pepys's intermingling of the public and the private that makes his diary so remarkable. Tomalin (Jane Austin: A Life, etc.) really knows her man, following him closely through some of the great events of English history. As a young government clerk, Pepys allied himself with his cousin Edward Montagu, who turned away from Cromwell to help Charles II become king in 1660, and the Restoration made Pepys's career. Highly organized, intelligent and a savvy political infighter, as Tomalin portrays him, he became a leading navy official and helped build the British navy into a world power. Tomalin also brings us inside Pepys's personal life: his tempestuous marriage, his romantic liaisons, his private, quite negative feelings about King Charles II. Tomalin writes brilliant chapters on all aspects of Pepys's life, relying not only on the diary but also on impressive scholarship. Tomalin clearly admires her subject, whose energy she constantly praises. For those who have already enjoyed the diary, Tomalin's learned and entertaining work admirably fills in the gaps. 16 pages of photos.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

The diaries of Samuel Pepys, with their vivid accounting of his public and private experience, offer an incomparable window into the world of 17th-century London, including the Restoration, the Plague, and the Great Fire. It is the integral relationship between the public and the private that underlines this new biography by Tomalin, a prolific writer with recently published biographies of Jane Austen and Nelly Teran, Charles Dickens's mistress. Her biography of Pepys is fluent and richly chronicled, drawing heavily on the diaries as well as on a large body of other contemporary diaries, letters, and documents. Though she writes for the general reader, skipping over much current scholarship and the scholarly debates, specialists will nonetheless find an attractive presentation of familiar ground. Highly recommended for public libraries and major university collections.-Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Sing another chorus of «Life Isn't Fair.» Last year, Stephen Coote, author of Royal Survivor (2000), a fine biography of English Restoration monarch Charles II, published an excellent life of the man who started to make the British navy the great instrument of empire that it became: Samuel Pepys, clerk of the acts on the Restoration-era naval board. Now Tomalin, author of the acclaimed Jane Austen (1997), rather trumps Coote by plumbing much more extensively Pepys' best-known achievement, his diary for 1660-69, considered the absolute classic of its type ever since its first, bowdlerized publication in 1825 (unabridged publication came as late as 1970). Coote drew upon the diary, but he concentrated on Pepys' significance as the archetypal modern bureaucrat, albeit one who had to observe the patronage system that persisted from medieval times until the nineteenth century, and did so adroitly and very much to his profit. Tomalin mines the diary, and she also expands upon the characters and events, great and small, that affected Pepys' life and livelihood to bring the man and his milieu to life--pungently as well as vibrantly, for one of her most effective tactics in the book is to point out how fulsomely every place smelled in an age lacking plumbing, sanitation, and cleanliness as we know them. Think of Tomalin's biography as the Technicolor version of a story Coote renders in sepia. Ray Olson. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

The tercentenary of the death of Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) has seen renewed interest in the man Robert Louis Stevenson called an "unparalleled figure in the annals of mankind." In prose of grace and clarity, Tomalin describes the rise of Pepys from humble tailor's son to secretary to the Admiralty and president of the Royal Society. Unlike Stephen Coote's recent biography (Samuel Pepys: A Life, CH, Nov'01), Tomalin's account does not lose steam after the diary closes in 1669. She provides a sympathetic reading of the difficult marriage of Pepys and Elizabeth de St. Michel, narrates the succession of physical ailments from which he suffered (including a horrifying description of the surgery for removal of a bladder stone), and demonstrates how his vitality and critical intelligence gave him an unrivaled mastery of all matters relating to naval affairs. Tomalin's regard for her subject makes her withhold judgment when discussing his "evolution" from republican to nonjuring royalist, and she handles his numerous infidelities with greater tact than previous biographers. But for the most part, she renders Pepys warts and all, reveling in his humanity and showing how the diary reveals "the bursting, disorganized, uncontrollable quality of his experience." Summing Up: Highly recommended. All libraries. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Pepys Family Tree	xii
Map 1 The London Dwellings of Samuel Pepys	xiv
Map 2 Huntingdon, Hinchingbrooke and Brampton	xvi
List of Principal Figures	xvii
Prologue	xxvii
Part 1 1633-1660
1. The Elected Son	3
2. A Schoolboy's War: Huntingdon and St. Paul's	18
3. Cambridge and Clerking	36
4. Love and Pain	49
5. A House in Axe Yard	65
6. A Diary	78
Part 2 1660-1669
7. Changing Sides	93
8. Families	117
9. Work	131
10. Jealousy	147
11. Death and Plague	160
12. War	176
13. Marriage	191
14. The King	211
15. The Fire	221
16. Three Janes	230
17. The Secret Scientist	246
18. Speeches and Stories	253
19. Surprise and Disorder	263
Part 3 1669-1703
20. After the Diary	273
21. Public and Private Life	292
22. Plots	305
23. Travels for the Stuarts	320
24. Whirligigs	332
25. The Jacobite	345
26. A Journey to Be Made	354
Epilogue	370
Notes	379
Bibliography	442
Index	450
Text and Illustrations Permissions	464

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