Yet more books – surely much in keeping with Pepys’s own feelings! Read about some of the other great men of the period, most of whom Pepys knew one, way or another.

Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn
Edited by Guy de la Bédoyère
The friendship, and correspondence, between Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn lasted almost forty years. This book includes every letter which could be located (some of which have been lost for more than a hundred years), and the complete text of each has been newly transcribed and fully annotated. Evelyn and Pepys are revealed in fresh dimensions as many details of their lives and friendship emerge which go unmentioned, or are barely alluded to, in the diaries.

The Diary of John Evelyn
Edited by Guy de la Bédoyère
Compared to that of Pepys, Evelyn’s diary is not nearly so well known. But consider that Evelyn began it at the age of 11 and kept it for most of his life, dying at 86, and you’ll understand why it’s an incredibly special document. This year is the 300th anniversary of the death of this remarkable man: friend to the great and good, including Charles II, writer on a range of subjects from architecture to fashion, and founding member of the Royal Society.
 

A Profane Wit: The Life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
An acclaimed biography of the poet and libertine whose debauched lifestyle and explicit, bitingly satirical verse scandalised society. John Wilmot was recently played by Johnny Depp in the film, The Libertine.

Buccaneer Explorer: William Dampier's Voyages
Edited by Gerald Norris
A brilliant navigator and seaman, Dampier sailed the world first as a pirate and buccaneer before securing a position with the Royal Navy. His achievements are too many to mention here, though his failings were manifold too. Thanks to his determination to record his voyages in detail, his abiding interest in nature and his unusually perceptive eye, we too can experience the remarkable events of his seafaring career.

The Iconography of Sir Isaac Newton to 1800
Milo Keynes
Catalogue and iconography of the extraordinary wealth of images of Sir Isaac Newton, both before and after his death.

Robert Boyle (1627-91): Scrupulosity and Science
Michael Hunter
A re-evaluation of Boyle in the light of new evidence of his tortured religious life and his difficult relations with his contemporaries.

Flamsteed's Stars: New Perspectives on the Life and Work of the First Astronomer Royal, 1646-1719
Edited by Frances Willmoth
Papers examining different aspects of John Flamsteed's career as the first ‘astronomer royal’.

Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge
Scroll down this page to find Boydell & Brewer’s multi-volume catalogue of Pepys’s great collection, “the finest surviving seventeenth-century library and one of the major libraries of the world despite its relatively modest size”.
To bibliographers and to historians of culture in the widest sense [this] up-to-date author-title catalogue, giving the place, imprint and date of publication together with the entry numbers, where appropriate, of Pollard and Redgrave and Wing, will need no recommendation. Its contents [are] as near to an epitome of late 17th-century English civilisation as we are likely to find. THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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