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Title: Samuel Pepys : The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin ISBN: 0-375-41143-7 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best English biographers at her very best
Comment: The only living English biographers I can think of who are in any way comparable to Claire Tomalin are Richard Holmes and Peter Ackroyd, and of the three I am not sure if Tomalin isn't the best. Certainly she is the most compulsively readable: she has a fine ability to clarify confusing historical matters and offer a clear and compelling narrative line.
This book on Samuel Pepys, her latest work, shows Tomalin at her very best. Pepys lived through (and was an important witness to) some of the most complex and drmaatic changes in British history--the Civil War, the Restoration, the Great Plague of London, the Great Fire, and the Glorious Revolution--and Tomalin presents them all so clearly and simply it's a bit of a wonder. Her work is animated by her great admiration and fondness her subjects, Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys. She never shirks in showing their many faults (Pepys's sexual compulsiveness with other women, both Pepys's physical violence towards each other and their servants) but she is also very attuned to what remarkable people they were, and how they jointly contributed (Pepys directly, Elizabeth indirectly) to one of the most remarable documents of all time: Pepys's great diary, the first great record of the Enlightenment self. I could not put this book down!
Rating: 5
Summary: Presents Great Character with Great Clarity
Comment: 2003 -- the 300th anniversary of Pepys death -- accidentally turned into the year of Pepys for me after I bought the audiobook version of his diaries read by Kenneth Branagh.
I fell in love with the diaries (read so well by Branagh), but was frustrated by my lack of knowledge about Restoration London. So, I did some reading in other history books, but eventually found this book. Tomalin has written a very clear biography that manages to give enough of the historical context without slowing down the personal narrative.
Better educated, I listened to the audiobook diary again and enjoyed them even more than the first-time around!
I highly recommend both the audiobook and this biography to anyone interested in becoming acquainted with a man who is fascinating and charming and frequently amoral, but remarkably honest! 1660 London doesn't seem so long ago or so foreign to me anymore!
Rating: 4
Summary: A Complex Man for Complex Times
Comment: Samuel Pepys was a man of some standing in his own times- part of what we would today call the establishment. He was a senior government official with responsibility for the Navy (the biggest spending government department in his day), a Member of Parliament, on speaking terms with two kings (Charles II and James II), President of the Royal Society and an Elder Brother of Trinity House. It is not, however, any of these achievements which have made him a household name, but rather his famous diary, which gives us such a vivid picture of both his life and his times. Had he not kept a diary, it is unlikely that his name would be known today except to historians of the seventeenth century navy and to those who are, like me, members of Magdalene College, Cambridge. (Pepys was a student at the college and its best-known benefactor; one of the college buildings is named after him).
This presents a problem to any biographer of Pepys. Although he lived for seventy years, from 1633 to 1703, his diary covers only the nine years between 1660 and 1669. (He abandoned it because of fears about his eyesight). We therefore know a great deal about a period covering just under one seventh of his total lifespan, and much less about the remaining six sevenths. As might be expected, therefore, this book covers the 1660s in much greater detail than it does the rest of his life.
Fortunately, that decade, the decade of the Restoration, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, was not only one of the most eventful in English history, but also the most important in Pepys's life, as it saw him rise from a minor clerk in government service to being a high official of the State. One of the main attractions of the diary, however, is that it deals with Pepys's private affairs (including matters that show him in a bad light), not merely with his official duties, and Ms Tomalin does not neglect this colourful side of his life. The portrait that emerges is one of a complex, contradictory figure. On the one hand, Pepys was a highly competent and hard working civil servant; on the other, he had little compunction about accepting bribes. Married to a beautiful young wife, to whom he professed devotion, he kept two long-term mistresses (Betty Martin and Mrs Bagwell) and was always ready to attempt the seduction of any other attractive woman who crossed his path. To some of his friends he showed great kindness; others he treated badly. In private, he could be disrespectful about his royal masters, yet in public he remained steadfastly loyal, even when it would have been in his interest to be otherwise. (Pepys's public career ended when he remained loyal to James II after the revolution of 1688 and refused to swear allegiance to the new King William III).
When dealing with the years 1633-60 and 1669-1703, especially the earlier period, Ms Tomalin has less material to work with. Nevertheless, she succeeds in giving a good overall account of the course of Pepys's life, as well as an entertaining portrait of the times in which he lived. That period, for the modern reader, can be as contradictory as the man himself; at times the men and women of the seventeenth century seem surprisingly modern, at others they bear out the truth of the dictum about the past being another country where they do things differently.
I was surprised, for example, by the description of Pepys's operation for a kidney stone; seventeenth century medical knowledge and surgical techniques were clearly more advanced than I had realised. The period was also one of greater social mobility than we are often led to believe; Pepys's father was not (as I had wrongly thought) part of the landed gentry but a poor London tailor. His first cousin Edward Montagu, however, was a wealthy and influential landowning magnate, made an earl by Charles II for the part he played in the Restoration.
The religious and political struggles of the time, however, can often seem very alien from a modern viewpoint. Even when we understand them at an intellectual level, it can be difficult to have much sympathy with either side. The traditional Whig interpretation of history, of course, viewed the period as marking the birth of English constitutional liberty, but this seems today to be, at best, a half-truth. Certainly, Charles II and James II can appear at times as quasi-mediaeval despots, trying vainly to hold on to their arbitrary power in the face of a nascent democracy. At others, however, they seem more like enlightened philosopher kings, defending toleration and liberty of conscience against a parliament of bigots who valued no freedom more highly than the freedom to persecute others. (It may have been this aspect of their character that inspired Pepys's loyalty to the Stuart dynasty; he shared a certain religious scepticism with Charles, although not with James who was a devout Catholic).
It is to Ms Tomalin's credit that she contents herself with giving the political background to Pepys's career and does not try to advance one historical interpretation at the expense of another (even though her subject was himself very much a Tory). This is, in fact, in many ways a fair, well-balanced book that I can recommend to anyone who is seeking an introduction to the colourful life of Samuel Pepys or who has an interest in seventeenth century history.
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Title: The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Richard Le Gallienne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel Pepys ISBN: 0679642218 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Jane Austen : A Life by Claire Tomalin ISBN: 0679766766 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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