Samuel pepys the unequalled self6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Tomalin, however, brings us the rest of Pepys’s story, notably his accomplishments as a businessman and naval administrator, one of the chief architects of the royal fleet that would soon after his time extend England’s empire to every corner of the world. Sex was much on Pepys’s mind throughout his adult life, as was the attendant guilt and there many biographers have left the matter. Plenty of tidbits from those diaries make their way into this thorough, richly detailed portrait by English writer Tomalin ( Jane Austen: A Life, 1997, etc.): on one page we find Pepys (1633–1703) chasing after a servant girl and castigating himself for his success, on another recording a moment of sexual pleasure with which he graced his long-suffering wife-and then worrying whether she might “get a trick of liking it,” as no seemly woman should in those days. A sparkling, wonderfully readable biography of the English official less well known for his contributions to good government than for his salacious, achingly self-doubtful diaries. ![]()
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