Samuel Pepys Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Samuel Pepys

In a 1695 memorandum in his diary Samuel Pepys wrote that he intended for his collection of books to differ from the "Extensive, Pompous, and Stationary Libraries of Princes, Universities, Colleges and other Publick-Societies" and from the "Voluminous Collections . . . of the Professors of Particular Faculties: as being calculated for the Self-Entertainment onely of a solitary, unconfined Enquirer into Books." His goal was to assemble "in fewest Books and the least Room the greatest diversity of Subjects, Stiles, and Languages its Owner's Reading [would] bear." He wanted these books bound decently and uniformly, and he sought to catalogue them clearly and comprehensively. The three- thousand-volume library that resulted from this vision indicates its creator's diverse activities: naval administrator, competent musician, amateur scientist who served as president of the Royal Society, devoted playgoer, intelligent observer of his world--in short, a Restoration virtuoso. As Robert Latham observes in the tenth volume of The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription (1983), "The library came to reflect almost as clearly as the diary itself the mind and personality of its owner." Because of Pepys's foresight, this library remains intact at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, where it has served generations of scholars, illuminated the book culture of seventeenth-century England, and provided insights into the mind of the man who assembled the collection.

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