| Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self Claire Tomalin (New York: Knopf, 2002), 470 pages Samuel Pepys, the greatest diarist ever to live, serves as the subject of this highly entertaining and candid biography. Throughout the book, the biographer Claire Tomalin paints a portrait of Pepys and his seventeenth century English life that looks remarkably like the world of today, though in some ways wholly different. Her simple, pointed prose brings a historical character of great significance into clear focus for the common reader of the twenty-first century. Pepys, born into the household of a common tailor in 1633, would witness and record the spectacular occurrences in and around London during ten painstaking years of his life between 1660 and 1669. This achievement proves more remarkable in that these were the first years of the restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Censorship reined supreme. In fact, his diary gives history its finest accounting of the major events in London at this time, including the plague of 1665 and the great fire of 1666. Without the covert writing of the diary, an objective view of these events would be lost to history. Pepys preserves them in lurid detail. In addition to the ten years covered by the diary, the reader learns the complete story of Pepys and his times through the eyes of Tomalin. Life during the seventeenth century could be explained as nasty, brutish, and short. Pepys suffered both physically and mentally as a result of the conditions. The surgery he underwent in 1658 to have a kidney stone the size of a tennis ball removed from his bladder receives detailed attention. Numerous siblings never survived childhood and this fact molded Pepys into a man who always lived for the moment. Tomalin also enlightens her audience about the professional life of Pepys through an accounting of his positions as secretary to the Admiralty and Member of Parliament. Overall, the life of Samuel Pepys outside of the years 1660-1669 proves fascinating for those already acquainted with the diary. Tomalin provides a portrait of Pepys that deserves its place among the greatest biographies ever written. This biography and the great man it portrays will stand the test of time. |
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