I did DNF this around 25% of the way through. However, from what I did read, it is clear that the author was very knowledgeable about the topic, and I did enjoy her writing style. I'm sure this will be an interesting book for anyone whose preferred topic in history this is, and for who gets a corrected final edition.

Many moons ago, I did an undergrad subject that I thought was part of the English department but was actually in Cultural Studies. It was about how "classics" get to be part of the canon - about how much there is to the construction of the canon, and that it's not just organic. So we looked at the various versions of Hamlet, and Pound's editing of "The Wasteland", and James Joyce's work at making Ulysses seem like a classic before it was even published.

All of which was in my mind as I read this amazing, fantastic book. Because what Loveman is doing is not just assessing and explaining the Diary, but also putting it in its historical context across the 350 years of its existence. How and why Pepys originally wrote it - and the fact that it is almost certainly not JUST a diary recording his uncensored thoughts, but consciously constructed. And then, even more interesting for me, the life of the Diary after Pepys' death.

The Restoration is not my favourite period, so I haven't studied the Diary much, if at all - and being Australian, I wasn't subjected to excerpts at school. So I had no idea that most of it is in shorthand, nor that for the last three centuries very few people have been able to actually read the Diary: what scholars have worked from is a transcription - a translation, even, given that transcribers don't always know what was intended. And then there's the fact that until the 1970s, there was NO unexpurgated version of the Diary published. Early editors cut out bits that were perceived as too raunchy, as well as bits that were perceived as too boring (also often, apparently, bits involving women...). So again, what people have "known" about Samuel Pepys has been constructed by choices, consciously or unconsciously made. The way Loveman sets out this publication history is completely absorbing in a way I hadn't really expected.

This book is deeply historical: it's thoroughly researched, involving I can't imagine how much time in archives. It is simultaneously wonderfully engaging, clearly written, and inclusive of fascinating tidbits - a newspaper column written like Pepys during the First World War, making daily observations! And a biting section about the work of editors' and transcribers' wives, "With thanks to...", for the enormous amount of unpaid work they have put in over the decades.

This is a book that appeal not just to folks who know something about Pepys and his diary, but to anyone with an interest in how history is constructed. Splendid.

In my reading I kept hearing about this Pepys Diary. I was susceptible to looking into books I heard about and when I saw a three volume set of the diary in a downtown Philadelphia used book store I purchased it. I read it over a few years. Later I learned about a new edition of the complete diary and my husband purchased the volumes as gifts. I read from the diary nightly over two or three years. I liked ending my day with “And so to bed.”

My favorite aspect of the diary was learning about life in Restoration London. How Pepys took a boat on the Thames to travel or hired a link to light the way home on moonless nights. How he went to court to watch the king dine and knew about the king’s many mistresses. How he adopted wearing a wig or ordered a new suit, and how on wash day Elizabeth had to hang the wet linens throughout the house to dry. His rivalries with Sir William Penn and others. Learning about the Great Fire and plague. Yes, of course, there was Pepys own indiscretions and betrayals. Which, apparently, has been the most famous–or, rather, infamous, part of his diary.

I figured the diary had always been known about. I knew that the Wheatley edition I first read was edited. I had never considered how the diary, written in shorthand, came to be made public in the first place.

Pepys’s journal is the first surviving English diary to track days from start to finish and also the first to move day by day across its entire run. from The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary

The history of the diary is far more complicated than I had expected.

Loveman considers why Pepys wrote the diary in the first place. He did not destroy it when he was being accused of treason although what it contained was a liability. The diary was as part of his library willed to his alma mater; did he expect others to read it, and if so, why?

The diary was not published in any form until 1825. Before that, a scholar would have needed to go to the library at Magdalene and read it in shorthand. The transcriber was in effect also an editor, omitting ‘objectionable’ passages. It was a success.

The Bright’s edition went back to the diary to transcribe the shorthand.

In the late 1890s, Henry B. Wheatley’s edition also omitted objectionable passages. He promoted the diary as ‘comic entertainment.’ The diary became popular, with spin offs and parodies.

The first edition to include the complete diary–objectionable material included–was the Latham and Matthews eleven volume set, which I have read.

Loveman then turns her attention to the objectionable material from a 21st c viewpoint. Many of Pepys’s sexual encounters were NOT consensual, and from his own words, appear to have been rape. She also considers the position of ‘blackmores’ and slaves in the diary and reveals that Pepys was a slave owner and economically benefiting from slavery.

I appreciated her tracing the changing views of the diary from comedy to insights into a society that condoned behavior we find reprehensible today.

Pepys has never been an admirable man in all aspects, and, trutfully, that is one of the attractions of the diary. In the end, his wife confronted and threatened him and he pledged to change his ways. Somehow, I am not convinced the pledge stuck. But we will never know.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

My thanks to NetGalley and Cambridge University Press for an advance copy of this book that serves as a profile of a man and a biography of his diary, one that has captivated readers over the years, and one that still is a puzzle to many scholars.

At the early part of the century I had a job at a magazine that I had drive to everyday. The commute was long, and my car was old, with only a cassette deck for entertainment. My library as usual had me covered, offering lots of classics on tape, which was a a godsend. It was here I was introduced to the diarist Samuel Pepys. The tape was long, but I was captivated by the reader, and what he was saying. The mix of ordinary affairs, outside of marriage affairs, and brushes with greatness kept me entertained for almost two weeks, and added a new term to my vernacular "And so to bed.", which I still continue to say. Since my introduction I have read quite a few books on Pepys, but most of those focus on the man and his times. This book is more of a look at why Pepys wrote his diary, something very daring for the times, how he wrote it, and how the diary has been presented to the world. With a lot of details that have been passed over. The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary by Kate Loveman is a biography of a book that shouldn't have been, and how even after all these years details are still being discovered, and how this changes our understanding of a man we thought we knew.

Samuel Pepys was a man who was self-made in many ways, and would be remembered in history for his works with the British Navy, if he was remembered at all. The reason we know Pepys is because one day Pepys started a diary, and kept it through a very momentous time in British history. The diary began with events of the day, how much money was spent, how he dealt with work problems, his wife's family and how his house was run. Pepys also wrote of his exploits outside of marriage, using a variety of foreign terms to explain encounters with the help, actresses, his wife's friends, and the occasional sex worker. Why Pepys would do this has always been a mystery. The book was written in a shorthand that was similar to what was being taught to young men in England, with a few variations, but nothing a determined person couldn't figure out. As England was going through a particularly tumultuous time, one that Pepys was very Zelig like in covering, a diary like this would be exhibit one in and case brought against him.

As I wrote I have read a few other books about Pepys but this is the first that looks at the diary for what it is. Something that really stand out as something uncommon. Historians have drawn much from it as Pepys was living in a very interesting time, and found himself at lot of key points. However it is the mundane, the money spent, the food eaten, the little things that interest scholars as much as his observation of the death of kings, the restoration of a monarchy, and the Great Fire of London. Loveman covers the history of the diary, explains the shorthand that Pepys uses and how the diary has been presented to the public. Loveman also looks at the darker aspects that many choose to gloss over, or giggle bout the French terms that Pepys uses to discuss his dalliances. Some of which in modern eyes seem much darker and far more violent than many have portrayed them.
I learned quite a bit from this book, and find myself of two minds about the man behind the words. Loveman is a very good writer, and is able to tell the reader much about the work that was both new and very understandable. If one has an interest in Pepys this will raise and answer a lot of questions.

Reception histories are flourishing in the academies and I find them fascinating reads. This book is no exception. My favorite part of it is the publication history, how the diary slowly unveiled its secrets to the reading public over the course of 100+ years and many publishers. The author has some dark Pepys secrets to untangle herself. Much food for thought here.