The Illustrated Pepys: Extracts From The Diary (Penguin Classic History S.) - Softcover

Pepys's Diary has long been recognised as the most remarkable diary in the English language, but it has been impossible until recent times to print it as he wrote it. Little academic work had been done on it and legal restrictions prevented the publication of its frankest passages in which Pepys describes his vigorous love life. With his unquenchable joy in life and his endless curiosity, Pepys is the perfect diarist for the general reader. In his pages the public events of the 1660s - the politics of the Restoration, the Dutch War, the Plague, the Great Fire of London - are interwoven with a richly diverting account of his colourful private life.

Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) began his famous diary on 1 January 1660 when he was very poor, but he was to rise to positions of importance which gave him a unique insight into the politics and manners of seventeenth century London society.