Further, one could find in the expurgated diary the rhythm of a successful late seventeenth-century Londoner's life. Those accounts were so graphic, lively, and knowledgeable that they became almost inevitable illustrations for modern narratives of the 1660s. Prior to the Latham-Matthews edition, Pepys was best known and appreciated for his descriptions of great events: the executions of the regicides at the Restoration, the plague of the spring and summer of 1665, the great London fire of 2-5 September 1666, or the brilliant attack by the Dutch on the Royal Navy in the home waters of the Medway (June 1667). Only since the 1970s has a scholarly, unexpurgated edition of the diary been available, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews (London and Berkeley, California, 1970-77). More than a century after his death, notice began to be taken of it, but the existence of so many 'objectionable' (id est, sexually revelatory) passages caused it to be published in expurgated form. The complete diary, in Pepys's hand, survived in six leather-bound volumes that were part of the valuable library that he collected and, at his death, willed to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he had been a student from 1651-54. Most of the diary concerns Pepys's consuming work as a high ranking royal servant during a formative period of the Royal Navy, but substantial space is devoted to social, political, financial, and sexual adventures, as well as to frequent medical and matrimonial crises. It was written in the shorthand developed, and published, earlier in the seventeenth century by Thomas Shelton, and was further obscured (to English eyes) by snatches of freely adapted French, Spanish, and Italian. Pepys's diary was not meant for the public, or indeed, for other eyes than his own. Diaries for other than purely spiritual purposes were rare in the seventeenth century, though Pepys's friend, John Evelyn (1620-1706) was creating another, first published in 1818. There was an entry for every day of the nine years, except for eleven days in September-October of 1668. Pepys was 27 when he began his journal in 1660 and 36 when he ceased in 1669. For nine years Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) kept what has become the most famous diary in the English language.

Claire tomalin pepys