Not Just the Tudors (History Hit)

Episode: Diary of Samuel Pepys

Date: October 30, 2025
Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Professor Kate Loveman, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Leicester

Overview:

In this episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb dives deep into the world of Samuel Pepys, one of history’s most famous diarists, by inviting Professor Kate Loveman—prominent Pepys scholar and recent winner of the Samuel Pepys Award 2025—to explore why Pepys kept his phenomenal diary, its historical legacy, and what it truly reveals about 17th-century England. Listener Angela Mayfield’s questions about Pepys’s life and legend provide a springboard for candid and nuanced discussion, including everything from war and cheese to censorship, sexual misconduct, and slavery.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

The Risks and Motives of Pepys’s Diary

• Pepys’s Gamble: Leaving a candid, sometimes scandalous diary to Magdalene College, Cambridge, was a risk. Kate Loveman explains Pepys hedged his bets by donating it in shorthand, with protected passages (08:07), making it difficult for adversaries to exploit.
• Perspective on Legacy: By 1703, Pepys saw his diary not only as a record of major events (the Great Fire, the Plague) but as valuable documentation for naval history—potentially starring himself (06:30).
• Quote:

  “He was setting the weighting of the dice for people who were going to be sympathetic to him, I think.”
  — Professor Loveman, (08:07)

The Revolutionary Nature of Pepys’s Diary

• Social History Pioneer: Pepys’s daily recordings gave equal weight to grand events and mundane details—unusual for his time—helping birth the field of social history (08:20).
• Detailed Accounts: The diary covers a vast array of experiences: meals, office politics, court gossip, finances, fashion decisions, theatre, sexual exploits, and home improvements (09:27).
• Quote:

  “By the end of his diary, he’s describing it as a document that records his pleasures.”
  — Professor Loveman, (09:27)

The Practice and Uniqueness of Pepys’s Diary

• A Relentless Record-Keeper: Pepys was a self-aware “pack rat,” archiving bill books, notes, and letters. Some records were periodically destroyed to protect himself, but the diary survived (11:33).
• The Formula: Unlike contemporaries, Pepys uniquely chronicled every day for almost a decade in unprecedented detail—using shorthand and code-switching to shield secrets (13:18, 15:44).
• Quote:

  “He started to switch languages between writing in a mix of English, French, Spanish, Latin, sometimes the odd bit of Greek.”
  — Professor Loveman, (15:44)

Privacy and Censorship

• Hidden in Plain Sight: Shorthand (Thomas Shelton’s Tychigraphy) was both fashionable and functional, offering privacy but not impenetrability. For especially sensitive matters (sex), Pepys threw in other languages and ciphers (15:44, 16:45).
• Audience of One—Or Many?: Pepys initially worried most about his wife or household discovering saucy details, but, by the diary’s end, appeared to anticipate eventual readers (20:01).
• Quote:

  “Particularly towards the end…he was getting quite a lot of enemies to his work…he had seen examples where his colleagues had been arrested and had their papers seized.”
  — Professor Loveman, (16:48)

Editorial Adventures and Scandal

• Heavily Edited First Edition (1825): The first published version was attacked for omitting sexual, irreverent, and “trifling” social material, reflecting contemporary standards of decency and historical “relevance” (27:14).
• Barriers and Frustrations: Early editors relied on students like John Smith to decode the text; censorship (both moral and legal) meant only a handful ever saw the uncut diary in the 19th century (29:15).
• Fan Fiction and Public Demand: Victorian readers’ appetite for “racy” Pepys spurred parodies and even fan fiction (34:20).
• Quote:

  “So the diary became exceptionally famous at a point where only one person had really actually read all of it.”
  — Professor Loveman, (29:15)

The Diary’s 20th-century Revival

• WWII Resonances: Pepys’s accounts of war, plague, and fire struck a chord during the Blitz—parallel anxieties and banality amidst crisis built his reputation as a relatable “hero” for ordinary people (36:51).
• Publication of the Unabridged Diary: Only after legal and cultural liberalization (1959 Obscene Publications Act) was the entire diary published (39:41).
• Quote:

  “People seem to find reading Pepys really reassuring. If England and Britain can get through the 1660s, they stand a chance of getting through the 1940s.”
  — Professor Loveman, (36:58)

How to Read Pepys Today

• Modern Approaches: The availability of complete editions and digital archives allows deeper research into marginalized figures and unspoken histories. Readers are encouraged to slow down, look for elisions, bias, or coded language, and read skeptically (41:00).
• Quote:

  “Pepys has got this reputation for being incredibly frank, but like any diarist, he didn’t write about every single thing…”
  — Professor Loveman, (41:00)

Breaking Down Pepys’s Flaws and Contexts

On Marriage and Misogyny

• Complex Marriage: Pepys never calls his wife by name, referring to her as “my wife,” revealing possessiveness and patriarchal assumptions; he records quarrels, mutual criticisms, but also affection and partnership (23:25, 26:35).
• Quote:

  “She calls him pricklous, which is a way of being offensive about his family background as a tailor. So she knows how to push the buttons.”
  — Professor Loveman, (26:45)

Sex and Power

• Predatory Behavior: Pepys’s sexual relationships often involved power imbalances with servants and vulnerable women; some cases suggest abuse and exploitation (42:52).
• Quote:

  “Some of what he’s doing is extremely predatory and exploitative. Others of it appears to be mutually enjoyed, if transactional.”
  — Professor Loveman, (43:38)

Complicity in Slavery

• Pepys and Slavery: While not a direct investor in slave trading companies, Pepys acted as a facilitator, owned enslaved people, and even sold an enslaved young man to the plantations—a fact often omitted or glossed over in his diary (44:24).
• Quote:

  “He did own enslaved people … [and] he sent off [a young black man] to the plantations to be sold, because the young man had been lying and pilfering and smoking in bed.”
  — Professor Loveman, (44:24)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Why Pepys Wrote the Diary

  “He was using it to vent his spleen … because he didn’t have anybody who was particularly close that he could talk to other than his wife.”
  (10:28 – 10:50, Professor Loveman)

• On Why He Stopped Writing

  “He stopped because he feared he was going blind … says that ending his diary is like seeing himself go to his Grave.”
  (21:09 – 21:50, Professor Loveman)

• On the Censorship of the First Edition

  “Most of Pepys private life went. And he also was busy tailoring Pepys to look like a credible, authoritative Georgian gentleman, which was no mean task because Pepys was not very polite…”
  (27:21 – 28:57, Professor Loveman)

• On Pepys’s Own Legacy

  “Samuel Pepys has something for everybody. … It is just helpful to read Pepys carefully, with a little bit of skepticism, as well as looking out for the inadvertent humour.”
  (49:18 – 50:22, Professor Loveman)

• On Celebrating Surgical Survival

  “He had a case made for it [his kidney stone] … every year he would have a celebration for his family and friends who had supported him through that operation.”
  (46:52 – 47:43, Professor Loveman)

• On the Legendary Buried Cheese

  “Digging a hole in the garden and burying your cheese and wine and your papers is at least doing something psychologically helpful. … he got his cheese back a few days later.”
  (48:23 – 49:07, Professor Loveman)

Key Timestamps

• 06:30 – Why Pepys left the diary to Magdalene
• 08:20 – Diary’s gradual transformation of historical understanding
• 09:27 – Breadth of topics in the diary
• 13:18 – Pepys’s innovative approach to diary writing
• 16:45 – Additional methods Pepys used for privacy
• 21:09 – Why Pepys stopped writing
• 27:21 – Censorship and publication of the 1825 edition
• 36:58 – WWII and Pepys’s revived popularity
• 41:00 – Modern methods for reading Pepys
• 42:52 – Pepys as sexual predator
• 44:24 – Pepys’s involvement in enslavement
• 46:52 – Legendary medical surgery
• 48:00 – Kissing the corpse of Catherine of Valois
• 48:23 – Hiding the parmesan: myth and fact
• 49:18 – Advice for the modern reader

Advice for Modern Readers

• Use a fully unabridged, scholarly edition (e.g., Latham & Matthews) to appreciate the diary’s complexity and avoid sanitized/censored texts (49:18).
• Approach Pepys with skepticism, curiosity, and an eye for nuance: attend to silences, read “against the grain,” and notice his self-presentation.
• Enjoy the humor and humanity, but do not shy from confronting Pepys’s flaws, prejudices, or darker legacies.

Final Thoughts:

Professor Loveman concludes that Pepys's diary is a uniquely rich artifact—“something for everybody”—that demands both appreciation and critical scrutiny. Its humanity, and messiness, remain as compelling and challenging today as in Pepys’s own time.

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