Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633 of a modest bourgeois family. He nevertheless studies in Cambridge and becomes one of the most important men of his time, occupying the rank of Secretary of the Admiralty in 1673 under the Restoration, and being elected to Parliament in 1679, having been twice imprisoned, a victim of the political and religious upheavals of his time. Close to Charles II, then to James II, he numbers among his friends such brilliant men as Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and John Dryden not to mention many of the lesser known literary figures of his time. From 1660 with the return of Charles II to England, Samuel Pepys begins to write a Diary full of a delicious impertinence and in direct contrast to the rigorous and dedicated public man displayed in his work. As underlined by Stevenson : His only desire seems to have been to display his respectability but he kept a Diary to show that he was quite the opposite. In fact, he keeps it precisely like a private diary, with numerous annotations and most of all with total earnestness, describing step-by-step the development of London life, its leisure and its Court and especially that of his own social class, the bourgeoisie, then in full mutation. Chronicler of the era of Charles II, in the same manner as Saint Simon in France during the reign of Louis XIV, Samuel Pepys above all includes in his memoirs truly personal confidences that are precious testimonies to English private life. In order to ensure that the secret remains well kept, he writes this diary in code, using the tachography of Shelton, and for the most squalid passages, he even uses the jargon of various languages.
It is notably thanks to his scrupulous notes on the theatre that one can follow the career of Thomas Shadwell, holding on this topic, as he did, a less subjective point of view than the virulent ranting written by John Dryden. Indeed he reports with humour and precision all theatrical representations of his time, being one of the rare civil servants to mingle with the nobles of the Court in the intimate circle of the theatres. A man of wit, with an insatiable curiosity that drives him to be interested in all events, insignificant or important, he possesses a quick and incisive pen as much as a truly journalistic sense of narration. In fact, his diaries, written between his 27th and 36th year, are an impressive body of information on the English Restoration. The entire work comprises six volumes that he bequeaths in his will to the College of Cambridge where they remain forgotten until their first publication as late as 1825!