Customer Reviews

Diary of Samuel Pepys: Selected Passages (Dover Books on Literature & Drama)

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Dover's republication of PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS returns a 1921 classic to print, providing select passages from Pepys' more extensive DIARY recounting the Great Fire of London and the Plague years. A vivid description of life in bygone England evolves, recommended for college-level courses in period English history.

This edition is very severly abridged, to the extent that it is meaningless. Before I began reading the Diary, I read Claire Tomalin's "Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self" which is excellent! She quoted extensively from the Diary as well as providing the historical and personal background that is crucial to understanding what and whom Pepys was writing about. There are entries that she quotes extensively, for example Monck's move against the Rump Parliment on February 11, 1660, which contains more information than the "selected passage" in the Diary. Aside from a very few meaningful passages, this edition is filled with short snippets of trivial activities of the day. It contains no heart, no soul which is what made the Diary famous in the first place. Instead of this book, I recommend Ms. Tomlin's book which is available at this very same botique.