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Memoirs of Samuel Pepys by PEPYS, Samuel
Book Description
London: Henry Colburn, 1825. First edition. Two quarto volumes (12 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches; 310 x 243 mm.). [2], xlii, 498, [2], xlix, [1, blank], [2, ads]; [4], 348, [2, sectional title] vii, [1, blank], [3]-311, [1, blank] pp., with half-titles in each volume. Engraved frontispiece in each volume, and eleven engraved plates (one folding), and embellished with two engraved illustrations in the text. Contemporary quarter sheep over marbled boards (Spanish marble), smooth spines lettered in gilt. Engraved bookplates affixed to front pastedowns. Some subtle restoration to spines. Minor edgewear. Scattered very light browning and foxing (especially to plates), as is usually the case. Subtle repairs to short marginal tears on leafs 2E2 and 2I4. Overall, an uncut and attractive copy of the seminal diary of the seventeenth century, housed in a custom clamshell box of tan linen with gilt black morocco lettering piece. Written in shorthand between 1660 and 1669, Pepys' diary was eventually deciphered in 1825 by the Reverend John Smith, who said of his work: "The original Diary is written in Short-hand, & extends to upwards of 3,000 pages ... I deciphered the whole, & transcribed it in nearly 10,000 Quarto pages. When I commenced it, I did not know a single character of Short-hand, wh[ich] varies much in places when Pepys wished to be unusually secret, & it occupied me in incessant labour for three years ..." (Drinkwater, Pepys: His Life & Character (New York: 1930); pp. 207-8). "It is the very private nature of the Diary which provides its piquancy: here was no writing for a public, no sensationalism, no needless embellishment. It is in such passages as the description of the Great Fire that Pepys reveals his shrewd powers of observation, his matter-of-factness and, in a strange way, an almost modern journalistic technique" (Blackwell's of Oxford). Grolier, 100 English 75, Sterling 674.
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