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Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin
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For a decade, beginning in 1660, an ambitious young London civil servant kept an astonishingly candid account of his life during one of the most defining periods in British history. In Samuel Pepys, Claire Tomalin offers us a fully realized and richly nuanced portrait of this man, whose inadvertent masterpiece would establish him as the greatest diarist in the English language.
Against the backdrop of plague, civil war, and regicide, with John Milton composing diplomatic correspondence for Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Wren drawing up plans to rebuild London, and Isaac Newton advancing the empirical study of the world around us, Tomalin weaves a breathtaking account of a figure who has passed on to us much of what we know about seventeenth-century London. We witness Pepys’s early life and education, see him advising King Charles II before running to watch the great fire consume London, learn about the great events of the day as well as the most intimate personal details that Pepys encrypted in the Diary, follow him through his later years as a powerful naval administrator, and come to appreciate how Pepys’s singular literary enterprise would in many ways prefigure our modern selves. With exquisite insight and compassion, Samuel Pepys captures the uniquely fascinating figure whose legacy lives on more than three hundred years after his death.
- Sales Rank: #232229 in Books
- Published on: 2003-11-11
- Released on: 2003-11-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.30" w x 5.20" l, 1.07 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) is the most famous diarist in English letters. From 1660 to 1669, he penned an unforgettable day-by-day description of Restoration London, with its disasters (the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666), its tumultuous politics and its amazing cultural fervor. Pepys's diary also describes his eager womanizing, as he makes passes, often clumsily, at barmaids and shop girls and the wives of his associates. It is Pepys's intermingling of the public and the private that makes his diary so remarkable. Tomalin (Jane Austin: A Life, etc.) really knows her man, following him closely through some of the great events of English history. As a young government clerk, Pepys allied himself with his cousin Edward Montagu, who turned away from Cromwell to help Charles II become king in 1660, and the Restoration made Pepys's career. Highly organized, intelligent and a savvy political infighter, as Tomalin portrays him, he became a leading navy official and helped build the British navy into a world power. Tomalin also brings us inside Pepys's personal life: his tempestuous marriage, his romantic liaisons, his private, quite negative feelings about King Charles II. Tomalin writes brilliant chapters on all aspects of Pepys's life, relying not only on the diary but also on impressive scholarship. Tomalin clearly admires her subject, whose energy she constantly praises. For those who have already enjoyed the diary, Tomalin's learned and entertaining work admirably fills in the gaps. 16 pages of photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Tomalin, biographer of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, goes beyond Pepys's diary years to examine his entire life.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Sing another chorus of "Life Isn't Fair." Last year, StephenCoote, author of Royal Survivor (2000), a fine biography ofEnglish Restoration monarch Charles II, published an excellent life ofthe man who started to make the British navy the great instrument ofempire that it became: Samuel Pepys, clerk of the acts on theRestoration-era naval board. Now Tomalin, author of the acclaimedJane Austen (1997), rather trumps Coote by plumbing much moreextensively Pepys' best-known achievement, his diary for 1660-69,considered the absolute classic of its type ever since its first,bowdlerized publication in 1825 (unabridged publication came as lateas 1970). Coote drew upon the diary, but he concentrated on Pepys'significance as the archetypal modern bureaucrat, albeit one who hadto observe the patronage system that persisted from medieval timesuntil the nineteenth century, and did so adroitly and very much to hisprofit. Tomalin mines the diary, and she also expands upon thecharacters and events, great and small, that affected Pepys' life andlivelihood to bring the man and his milieu to life--pungently as wellas vibrantly, for one of her most effective tactics in the book is topoint out how fulsomely every place smelled in an age lackingplumbing, sanitation, and cleanliness as we know them. Think ofTomalin's biography as the Technicolor version of a story Cooterenders in sepia. Ray Olson
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
79 of 79 people found the following review helpful.
One Heck of a Biography
By Lauren S. Kahn
I buy a lot of books from Amazon[.com] and, because I am so busy reading them, I do not often review them. This biography of Samuel Pepys was just terrific, so I had to say something about it.
I am a history buff and suppose anyone buying this book would have to be. Samuel Pepys, as it turns out, was a lot more than just a diarist. He was, in effect, what we would call Secretary of the Navy during the Restoration.
Raised as a Puritan, he successfully made the switch to a Stuart supporter when The Restoration became inevitable after Oliver Cromwell died and his son just did not measure up to the job.
We are taken into the world of an ambitious man clawing his way up to the top of the greasy pole. He knows how it is done--and how to make money from bribes (and convince yourself that you are not doing anything immoral at the same time). The way things were done in 17th century was a bit different than it is in the modern US--and perhaps a bit of the same.
The most riveting bit about Pepys life was an operation he underwent in 1658 for the removal of a bladder stone. It goes without saying that there was no anesthesia in those days. First they tied you down and then they cut and probed; there is an illustration of someone trussed up like a turkey with a probe inserted in--well, you have to see it.
Great pain and death was a daily companion for those living before anesthesia--and I am not even going to talk about tooth pain. Death, moreover, was all around. Children died from all sorts of diseases that are easily curable now. Any sort of fever could end in death--and, of course, there was bubonic plague, which killed off about 1/6 of London's population in a single year.
I found this book absolutely riveting. It is 378 pages of text (and oodles of pages of notes for the compulsive people like me who read them). I read it in 3 days.
If you are interested in English history you will love this book. Maybe one of these days I will even get around to reading Pepys' diaries.
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful.
A Literary Time Capsule
By A Customer
I bought this book as a follow-up after listened to the audio recording of Pepys Diary narrated (performed!) by Kenneth Branagh to get a more in depth knowledge of the historical times, characters and political forces of the day. I am no avid historian but great history can approach great literature in stature (my bias). This very well researched and thoroughly documented account of the life of Samuel Pepys spans the years prior to, during and subsequent to the diary years. Although the most compelling period is the diary years, the times prior to that disclose his upbringing and particularly his health and it's lasting imprint on this amazing character - no doubt contributing to his life long ambitious drive and living for the moment. You will never consider a kidney stone in the same light after reading this account!
As preivious reviewers here have noted, the diary was written largely in code. That and heavy editing by nervous publishers over the years have kept the complete story from full disclosure for nearly 300 hundred years. Initially the bawdy stories kept my rapt attention, but this research reveals it is much more than that - a very multi-layered and mullti-faceted sotry that for the history novice like me, puts a humanistic face on the 17th century.
Significant points that Tomalin reveals include that this secret diary is one of the best historical accounts that covers London's Restoration period as the King had tight control over "the press". The diary documents firsthand accounts of the plague, the great fire, the return of the king to the thrown, the many wars at sea with the Dutch, the political struggling between the Royals and the Common Wealth, the intense distrust between protestants and catholics and religious persecution. In addition there are firsthand reviews of various plays (including Shakespeare, Chaucer), comments on copious consumption (and burial) of wine and Parmesan cheese, personal hygiene standards as well as graphic descriptions of the system of justice during this time.
This is a time capsule worth reading and listening a few times.
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful.
Peppy Fellow
By Bruce Loveitt
A good biographer must tread a fine line. She must enable us to get beneath the skin of her subject. We have to be made to feel that we really understand what makes the subject tick. On the other hand (if you don't mind me mixing my metaphors!) she must maintain a critical perspective. The biography should not degenerate into "hero worship". In "Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self" the biographer, Claire Tomalin, has managed to achieve this balance. Admittedly, as far as getting beneath her subject's skin, Ms. Tomalin has been helped by one of the most famous diaries of all time- the one kept by Pepys from his late 20's until his late 30's. But I have seen other biographies of Pepys that relied too much on the diary- where the diary became a crutch that enabled the biographer merely to amuse us with its sometimes slapstick sexual content, rather than to thoughtfully present us with a well-rounded, flesh-and-blood human being. So, besides reporting on Pepys's crude and predatory amorous adventures, much of the book is devoted to Pepys's hard work over many years as a naval administrator. He devoted himself to modernizing the Navy by both the introduction of proper record keeping and by using the resultant statistical data to develop a more efficient procurement process. He also never stopped trying to get adequate funding so that more ships could be built. Pepys, who as a teenager witnessed the execution of Charles I and who was an admirer of Cromwell, was a great believer in meritocracy. However, Ms. Tomalin also shows us a Pepys who didn't fail to enrich himself by taking advantage of his position- he accepted numerous "gifts" from people who wanted government jobs or contracts. (The "gifts" weren't always in the form of money. One particularly ambitious ships' carpenter "loaned out" his wife to Pepys!) Pepys also used his position to help out friends and family members. Of course, the author points out that this was common practice at the time. But, we have to smirk a bit when Pepys puffs himself up and states he would never take a bribe! (He convinced himself that he wasn't being "bought" since he claimed that the decision making process was never influenced by the money or payment-in-kind that he received. He said he always did what was best for the country, and that the "gifts" were mere gestures of appreciation.) Ms. Tomalin is never heavy-handed in her presentation. She never fails to put Pepys's behavior in its proper context- we are always reminded of how people behaved in both their public and private lives back in the 17th century. Where some previous biographers have tended to zero in on either Pepys the diarist or Pepys the naval administrator, Ms. Tomalin gives us the whole man. We learn that Pepys was an intensely social person- he loved going out to the coffee-houses, to the theater and to concerts, etc. Although not a true scientist, he was a very curious man who wanted to know what made the world tick. He belonged to the Royal Society for many years and was delighted to attend the meetings and to learn about new theories and to hear of the latest experiments. He knew Newton, Boyle, Hooke and Wren. Ms. Tomalin also tells us of Pepys's lifelong passion for music. He grew up in a musical household and throughout his life he loved both to play music and to listen to music performed by others. He enjoyed good food and was an avid reader. He built up an impressive library, which he left to Cambridge University. The beauty of this biography is in the nuances- in showing us all the facets of this remarkable man.
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