Great Britain. Royal Navy - Samuel Pepys: the unequalled self

PENGUIN BOOKS
SAMUEL PEPYS

Book of the Year Choices:

Brings her subject as vividly to life as his diaries brought to life the world he chronicled Matthew Parris, Mail on Sunday

A triumph. Beautifully structured Roy Jenkins, Sunday Telegraph

Hard to stop reading. Captures the stink and bustle of mid seventeenth-century London Ian McEwan, Guardian

A masterpiece of insight, empathy and concision Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard

A marvellously fresh account of the most neglected of great English writers, stripping away centuries of accumulated varnish and showing the human, silly, intensely lovable face beneath Philip Hensher, Observer

Outstanding. Simultaneously informative and entertaining Roy Hattersley, Observer

The best biography Ive come across for ages. Tomalins description of Pepyss early life is the best there is Colin Barrow, Evening Standard

A convincing and memorable picture of Pepyss world; this is the best of introductions to the incomparable diary Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times

An unrivalled analysis of a marriage is distinguished above all by her wisdom, compassion and humanity Frank McLynn, Independent

A model of industry and research, beautifully written Anthony Howard, New Statesman

A happily illustrated, well-written, exhaustively researched and splendidly produced book. I enjoyed it greatly Colin Dexter, Oldie

Takes the laurels for biography this year. Tomalin give a gripping account of non-diary Pepys. A thoughtful and eloquent study Claire Harman, Evening Standard

Marvellous. Reveals the diarist and civil servant as never before Charles Guthrie, Sunday Telegraph

Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism all her life. She was literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize for 1974; Shelley and His World (reissued by Penguin in 1992); Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1988), a biography of the modernist writer on whom she also based her 1991 play The Winter Wife; the highly acclaimed The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Teman and Charles Dickens, which won the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the NCR Book Award in 1991, as well as the Hawthornden Prize; Mrs Jordans Profession (1995), a study of the Regency actress; Jane Austen: A Life (1998); a collection of her literary journalism entitled Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades (1999); and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the Whitbread Biography Award and which went on to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for 2002. All her books are published by Penguin.

The Unequalled Self

CLAIRE TOMALIN

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Viking 2002
Published in Penguin Books 2003
20

Copyright Claire Tomalin, 2002
Maps copyright Andrew Farmer, 2002
All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The acknowledgements on pp. constitute an extension of this copyright page

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

978-0-14-191031-4

The whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepyss own address. Here, then, we have the key to that remarkable attitude preserved by him throughout his diary, to that unflinching I had almost said, that unintelligent sincerity which makes it a miracle among human books Whether he did ill or well, he was still his own unequalled self; still that entrancing ego of whom alone he cared to write.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel Pepys

Un livre est le produit dun autre moi que celui que nous manifestons dans nos habitudes, dans la socit, dans nos vices.

Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve

[There is] in every one, two men, the wise and the foolish, and each of them must be allowed his turn. If you would have the wise, the grave, the serious, always to rule and have sway, the fool would grow so peevish and troublesome, that he would put the wise man out of order, and make him fit for nothing: he must have his times of being let loose to follow his fancies, and play his gambols, if you would have your business go on smoothly.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, to John Locke

. Distant view of St Pauls and the City from rural Islington, where Pepyss father took his children for outings (Hollar, 1665). From Pepyss own collection of prints.

. Detail of Milford Stairs on the Thames (Hollar, 1640s). From Pepyss own collection.

. Durdans in Surrey, where Pepyss uncle John Pepys served Sir Robert and Lady Theophila Coke, and where he took Samuel as a child (Jacob Knyff, 1673).

. Destruction of Cheapside Cross by puritan zealots (1643). From Pepyss own collection.

. North-east view of Hinchingbrooke House outside Huntingdon, home of Edward and Jemima Montagu.

. Jemima Montagu, wife of Edward Montagu and mistress of Hinchingbrooke. Early miniature (c. 1646).

. Edward Montagu, Pepyss cousin, benefactor and patron (Peter Lely, c. 1646).

. The house at Brampton, near Hinchingbrooke, which belonged to Pepyss uncle Robert, bailiff to the Montagus.

. Execution of the earl of Strafford on Tower Hill, 12 May 1641 (Hollar). From Pepyss own collection.

. A print of Cromwell from Pepyss own collection.

. Execution of Charles I outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, 3o January 1649.

. New Palace Yard, looking towards Whitehall Palace, showing Westminster Hall and the Clock Tower (1664).

. Samuel Morland, Pepyss tutor at Magdalene College, Cambridge (Peter Lely, 1659).

. George Downing MP, diplomat and Pepyss employer at the Exchequer.

. David Loggans print of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1690, showing the new building that later housed Pepyss library.

. Pepyss signed list of household items, made while he was servant to the Montagus in the late 1650s.

. Frontispiece of Edward Phillipss The Misteries of Love and Eloquence: The Arts of Wooing and Complementing (1658), a book of advice on love for young men of the commonwealth period, by Miltons nephew.

. Operation for removal of a bladder stone, from the 1683 English edition of Franois Tolets surgical text