1. Samuel Pepys 1633-1703

2. His Life Pepys (pronounced “peeps”) was the son of a London tailor. He studied at St. Paul’s school and Cambridge, and then took a position as an officer of the navy administration. He was was falsely accused of treason in 1679 and then arrested again in 1690, but all charges were eventually dropped. The late turbulent events of 1650's England (Oliver Cromwell died in September 1658 leaving no real successor apart from his son Richard-- who was no politician.) could be one of Pepys’ reasons for beginning a diary. Others credit his writing to his sense of vanity.

3. His Diary 1660-1669 A “Londoner to the core,” Pepys was interested in all the activities of the city: theater, music, the social whirl, business, religion, literary life, and science. Pepys wrote in shorthand, and sometimes in code and in foreign languages to protect himself during his day.code His entries range from the very personal- including revelations of infidelity - to detailed eye-witness accounts of events in 17th-century England - such as the plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London and Charles II's coronation - and some of the key figures of the era, including Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton.

4. His Diary (cont) 1660-1669 He is known and famous for his frank tone and rich detail in recording both public and private matters. Fear of losing his eyesight prompted Pepys to stop writing the diary in 1669. In his 9 years of writing he wrote approximately 1.3 million words. Published after his death (in the 19 th century), the diary was instantly famous and became an important historical document. “[His diary] gives us a sense of somebody else’s world: what it was like to live in the Restoration, and what it was like to see through the eyes of Pepys.

5. Works Consulted: The Norton Anthology of English Literature http://www.pepysdiary.com/about/history/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys http://www.pepys.info/