732 The Bible (#18 GBOAT) | The Diaries of Samuel Pepys (with Kate Loveman) | Health Advice

Summary

The History of Literature Podcast

Episode 732: The Bible (#18 GBOAT) | The Diaries of Samuel Pepys (with Kate Loveman) | Health Advice

Host: Jacke Wilson
Guest: Kate Loveman (Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Leicester)
Date: September 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

Jacke Wilson continues the "25 for 25: Greatest Books of All Time" series, reaching #18 on the list—The Bible. The episode opens with reflections on the Bible’s literary and cultural stature, with notable literary quotes about the text. The latter half features an in-depth interview with Kate Loveman about her new book The Strange History of Samuel Pepys' Diary. Loveman offers insights on Pepys’ life, his diary’s content and legacy, and how it has shaped our understanding of the Restoration era. The show also includes a playful health advice segment from Jacke, focusing on circadian rhythms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

I. Health Advice: Circadian Rhythms and Sunlight

Segment start: [04:00]

• Jacke’s humorous take on health trends: He notes that beyond the basics of diet, exercise, and sleep, new advice about circadian rhythms is circulating.
  • Best tip: Go outside into direct sunlight for 5–10 minutes within an hour of waking.
  • He jokes about ways to "make it efficient," e.g., walking the dog, considering taking up smoking (in jest), and then settles on drinking coffee outdoors.
  • Jacke riffs on how stripping off clothes could make the process faster:

    “So then it occurred to me, well, what if I go outside in the sunlight and I take my shirt off? I could cut that time in half, right? ... So if I went outside completely naked, doubling my surface area, I could cut it down again to two minutes, right?” ([08:40])

  • Self-deprecating conclusion:

    “So if you see a man sprinting through your neighborhood at the crack of dawn, stark naked, holding a cup of coffee, don’t be alarmed. Please don’t call the authorities. Just smile, shake your head, and say to yourself, there goes Jack Wilson, the healthiest man I know.” ([09:55])

II. The Bible: 10 Takes from Literary Figures

Segment start: [15:00]

• Context: Introduction to The Bible’s placement as #18 in the "Greatest Books of All Time."
• Jacke reflects on the complexity of ranking The Bible, given its spiritual significance to some and peripheral status to others.
  • Previous podcast episodes on The Bible and its parts are referenced ([16:40]).
• A curated list of 10 literary quotations about The Bible:
  1. Augustine:

     “We must surrender ourselves to the authority of Holy Scripture for it can neither mislead nor be misled.”
     — on the infallibility of the text ([18:50])

  2. John Bunyan:

     “I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under. And yet at another time, the whole Bible hath been to me as dry as a stick.”
     — on the variable experience of reading scripture ([19:50])

  3. Kierkegaard:

     “To read the Bible as God's word, one must read it with his heart in his mouth, on tiptoe with eager expectancy...”
     — on the devotional approach vs. academic reading ([20:30])

  4. Mark Twain:

     “It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me. It's the parts that I do understand.”
     — on the challenge of the Bible’s plainest messages ([21:10])

  5. Charles Dickens:

     “Because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature... can possibly be guided.”
     — from a letter to his son ([22:20])

  6. T.S. Eliot:

     “Those who talk of the Bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity.”
     — critiques literary admiration that sidelines religious import ([23:30])

  7. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans):

     “I regard these writings as histories consisting of mingled truth, fiction..."
     — a historically aware, secular view ([24:40])

  8. Dan Savage (columnist):

     “The Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”
     — the importance of interpretation ([25:40])

  9. Shakespeare:

     “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”
     — highlights potential for misuse ([26:15])

  10. Ambrose Bierce (via The Devil’s Dictionary):

      Christian: "One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
      — with a satirical poem reflecting on religious hypocrisy ([27:00])

• Jacke’s key observation: The Bible’s meaning and authority are always shaped by the reader’s approach and context.

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III. Interview: Kate Loveman on Samuel Pepys' Diary

Segment start: [32:39]

A. Introduction to Pepys and His Diary

• Kate Loveman: Professor, early modernist, expert on Pepys.
• Pepys' diary covers 1660–1669 in London, written in shorthand—partly for privacy ([32:59]).
• Major events: Great Fire of London, the plague, Restoration politics ([33:30]).
• "He wrote about a million and a quarter words... He stopped in May 1669, because he feared that writing it was harming his sight." — [34:18]

B. Pepys’ Life and Social Standing

• Modest origins; father a tailor, mother a servant ([35:03]).
• Benefited from the patronage of his powerful relative, Sir Edward Montagu, and became a key figure in the Royal Navy ([35:12]).
• Not initially recognized as brilliant, but increasingly influential ([37:09]).

C. Content, Purpose, and Style of the Diary

• Pepys’ motives:
  • Practical: keep records for career and health ([40:04]).
  • Emotional: diary as a private confidant and venting space ([40:48]).
  • No explicit evidence he considered his thoughts genius—"genius" used in the sense of temperament ([42:02]).
• Written in shorthand and with code-switching to keep some passages private (sex, bodily functions, etc.)—he knew it was scandalous ([42:27]).
• Left the diary and entire library to Magdalene College, Cambridge—preserved as he mandated ([44:04]).

D. Reliability and Legacy as a Historical Source

• Generally a trustworthy eyewitness, especially for major events ([46:54]).
• Blind spots particularly evident in his own misbehavior, e.g., ambiguous or euphemistic accounts of sexual exploits ([47:35]).
• Not a “candid tell-all” by modern standards; self-reflection is limited, and focus is often external ([48:56]).

E. Reading the Shorthand and the Diary’s Material History

• Only about ten people can currently read Pepys’ shorthand ([52:13]).
• Longhand words inside the diary function like highlights/bold—often for surprising details
  • Example: “Piss” written in longhand at Charles II’s coronation—possibly for memory/summarization ([54:03]).
• The original diary remains at Magdalene College, Cambridge—a time capsule as Pepys desired ([55:39]).

F. Publication and Shifting Reputations

• For over a century, the diary sat largely unread due to the shorthand ([59:23]).
• First full transcription and partial publication in early 19th century—heavily censored ([60:45]).
  • "Victorian censored version... cuts out most of Pepys personal life. It’s really about the King, the court, some events... much less about Pepys home life... things that we actually really value in the diary today were often not in this first edition." ([61:10])
• Modern editions and perspectives value the social history—the daily lives, servant dynamics, and Pepys’ flawed humanity ([63:13]).

G. Enduring Popularity and Modern Relevance

• The diary brings the past "close," especially during crises (e.g., WWII Blitz, Covid pandemic) ([70:37]; [72:15]).
• Comfort found in Pepys’ relatability, flaws, and quotidian concerns as well as major events.

“This happened again during the COVID pandemic. People turned to Samuel Pepys diary and are reading it to find out about what happens in quarantine, you know, sort of for lessons, but also for kind of comfort…” — Kate Loveman ([72:15])

H. Final Thoughts

• Pepys would be pleased with his fame, though perhaps frustrated that it rests mostly on the diary rather than his naval work ([69:05]).
• The evolving image of Pepys over centuries is shaped by selective publication, evolving values, and the ongoing resonance of his detailed, sometimes scandalous, sometimes ordinary records.

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Memorable Quotes

• On circadian rhythms:

  “You have to do it within an hour of waking up, though... But depending on where you live and what season it is and what time you wake up... might not be so easy.” — Jacke ([05:46])

• On reading the diary in shorthand:

  “He kind of uses his longhand almost as a way of writing things in bold or capital letters. And those are not always the things you might expect...” — Kate Loveman ([54:09])

• On Pepys’ flawed yet comforting humanity:

  “Pepys isn’t some great hero. Or at least the version of Pepys that is more comforting is the version who is flawed, who... complains about, you know, the fact that the price of eels has gone up when a heroic person would be more worried about the fate of the nation.” — Kate Loveman ([71:51])

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Health Advice – Circadian Rhythms: [04:00]–[10:00]
• 10 Literary Takes on the Bible: [15:00]–[31:00]
• Interview: Kate Loveman on Pepys’ Diary: [32:39]–[73:33]
  • Pepys’ Life and Diary: [32:39]–[46:00]
  • Reliability and Social Context: [46:21]–[50:00]
  • Reading the Shorthand: [52:13]–[55:30]
  • History of Publication/Censorship: [57:03]–[63:09]
  • Modern Reception/Enduring Appeal: [70:37]–[73:24]

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Episode Tone

Warm, witty, and insightful. Jacke blends humor (especially in health advice) with thoughtful literary commentary. The conversation with Kate Loveman is scholarly yet accessible, focusing on the diary’s complexity, relevance, and continued fascination.

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For New Listeners

This episode stands alone and provides:

• An engaging literary-theoretical exploration of The Bible’s status as literature.
• Accessible introduction to Samuel Pepys’ Diary—its creation, content, scandal, censorship, and modern relevance.
• Playful and personal moments with Jacke Wilson.
• Insights that connect literature, history, and contemporary experience.

Recommended for anyone interested in literary history, diaries, or the ways literature shapes personal and collective memory.

Transcript

[A]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello dear listeners and my friends. This is Jack Wilson reminding you that the History of Literature Podcast is going on tour. It's still a few months away, but the deadline is this month, September. That's your chance to put down your deposit if you would like to go. Let me tell you a little more about the trip. In May of 2026, I will be accompanying a small group of travelers on a trip through London, Oxford and Bath with stops at literary sites, houses of authors, restaurants where they ate, and so on. It will be a chance to meet some like minded people as we all enjoy literature and life. Nice hotels and restaurants, lots of meals and fellowship, traveling together in the land of Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Dr. Johnson and more. And some special guests, people you've heard on the show will be joining us to shake our hands and answer our questions and generally participate in this celebration of books and writers and all the things we like best here at the podcast. As I said though, the signup is only open through September. That's so we can plan the trip. That's right, you have until the end of the month to secure your spot. So head over to John Shores Travel, that's our partner who's taking care of all the logistics, and put down your deposit. That's John Shores S H O R S. Or you can go to historyofliterature.com and follow the links there. Join us for an experience you can't get anywhere else because you deserve it. Race the rudders.

[B]

Raise the sails.

[A]

Race the sails.

[B]

Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.

[A]

Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started [e-mail] campaign terms and hello. Today on the podcast we continue our climb up the list of the greatest books of all time with a look at number 18, the Bible. And we talked to one of the few people to have read the entire diaries of Samuel Pepys in the original shorthand and coded language. Do the famous excerpts distort our view of this 17th century bureaucratic and diarist? We'll find out. And some health advice from yours truly, all coming up today on the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. I'M so glad you're here today. So we have a lot to get to, so let's get started. First up, I promised you some health advice. Circadian rhythms, have you heard of those? I have received some advice from several different sources. This must be going around that the best thing you can do for your health. Well, you're already a step ahead of me, aren't you? You already know what I'm going to say. Well, actually, no circadian rhythm, I'm going to say diet and exercise, it all comes down to that most of the time. But let's assume you've got that squared away and you're looking for some extra help, some tweaks to your regime or you know what, sleep, diet, exercise and sleep, those are the big three. But let's say you're having some trouble sleeping. And as my kids and my work colleague told me, the best thing you can do for your sleep is to make sure that your circadian rhythm is squared away. This is your body's 24 hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness. The patterns that govern you and all us, all of us that keep us sharp and alert when we're awake and in a productive form of sleep when we're not. And apparently the best way to boost the alignment of your circadian rhythm is to go outside into direct sunlight for five to 10 minutes within an hour of waking up. That's it. That's it. Sounds easy, right? If you're somebody who's changed your diet and maybe you go to the gym or the fitness center or jump on the exercise bike or strap on those running shoes, taking off and working yourself into a panting, sweaty lather. Well, this sounds easy, doesn't it? Five to ten minutes going out into direct sunlight. You have to do it within an hour of waking up, though, so. Sounds easy. But depending on where you live and what season it is and what time you wake up and how busy you are might not be so easy. So I was determined to fix this, to work on my circadian rhythm because I don't always sleep that well and my circadian rhythm could use some adjusting. But I also have to podcast and early mornings are my podcast time, So I don't have a whole lot of time and to spare in these mornings. And frankly, I'm usually up before the sunrise, sometimes hours before the sunrise. So how do you do the within the hour thing? And not sure how you're supposed to handle it if you work nights or if you live in Alaska and it's wintertime and scenarios like that. But, hey, I don't want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to my health. So I did have another dilemma, though, as I was approaching this new pattern, this new endeavor. What do I do outside? If I just go and stand outside, counting down the minutes, say I've got to get at least five. Between five and ten minutes out here, I probably be getting all stressed out thinking of all the podcasting that I'm not doing and all the emails piling up and all the guests I'm not preparing for and all that. Well, maybe I should use the time better than that. I could take a chair out there, sit down and read, I suppose, try to find a spot in the sunlight and read for five minutes. But frankly, if in the morning, if I do that, I'd probably fall asleep. So I asked my work colleague who recommended this, what she did, and she has it solved. She has a dog. That's a good distraction. You got to take the dog out for a walk, wake up, take the dog out. Five to ten minutes. Happy dog, happy circadian rhythm, strong health. Well, I don't have a dog, so there was only one other option that I could think of. I would need to take up smoking. Smokers have it great. It's easy for them. They love to go outside. In fact, they crave it. Five to ten minutes within an hour of waking up. That's no problem for someone addicted to nicotine. Now, I don't love the idea of smoking. Wouldn't be my chosen hobby to take up. But if it's for my health, I figured I should probably do it. So I suggested this to my work colleague, who said that maybe you can do the same thing with coffee. Fair enough. I already drink coffee. So I can go outside with my coffee cup and walk around drinking coffee, soaking in that sunlight and fixing my circadian rhythm. So the first day I tried, it was fine. I was out there for eight minutes getting that sun. That felt good. But I did feel a little anxious about being away from podcasting for that long. That's a lot. Eight minutes is a big chunk of time. I can get a lot done in eight minutes. So then it occurred to me, well, what if I go outside in the sunlight and I take my shirt off? I could cut that time in half, right? Because I'd be getting double the sun on my skin. It stands to reason. Four minutes with no shirt, that was smart. But why stop there? That was the next thing that occurred to me. Four minutes, even. That's kind of long. You can get a lot done in four minutes. So if I went outside completely naked, doubling my surface area, I could cut it down again to two minutes, right? All that sun getting an accelerated dose, Circadian rhythms satisfied. The problem, of course, is that I'm kind of a modest guy. And even though most of my neighbors are not up that early, they might look out their windows. And it's probably not legal to be walking through the neighborhood naked. So, still wanted to do. I could do it. But clearly I would need to run, just in case. So that's my new plan. So if you see a man sprinting through your neighborhood at the crack of dawn, stark naked, holding a cup of coffee, don't be alarmed. Please don't call the authorities. Just smile, shake your head, and say to yourself, there goes Jack Wilson, the healthiest man I know. Moving on. Oh, excuse me. Receiving a visitor. Oh, boy, oh, boy. Just got rainy here in the studio.

[B]

Lady Macbeth, I'm here to ask you. Now, now, stop. Sorry. That's my dog, Spot. His favorite dog walker hasn't shown up yet, and he's refusing to. Out out, you damn, Spot. He's simply refusing to leave the castle without his favorite dog walker. What happened to the dog walker? Funny story, actually. I had my husband kill him. I can't remember why. Something about a dagger. Anyway, our desperate and sweaty minion, Jack Wilson, is going to procure a new dog walker. But he. Spot, if you don't get out now, I shall kick thee all the way to Dunsinane Hill.

[A]

You know I would. You know I would. To Dunsinane.

[B]

Won't you help Mr. Wilson secure a few funds, Spot? And I shall be ever so grateful.

[A]

Hmm, Indeed. And that comes straight from the desperate and sweaty minion himself, Jack Wilson. I forgot about. I forgot that one. We haven't run that one in a while. I forgot about Lady Macbeth coming to visit. All the puns she had. Well, guess what, folks? There is a new way to support the podcast. Excuse me? There's a couple of them, in fact. We're running low ad versions of the podcast at our Patreon page, so you can go there and Sign [e-mail] Literature. Sign up for one of the tiers with, you know, give a. Throw a few dollars our way each month. And if you'd like to listen to the podcast with fewer ads, there's now a way to do that. It doesn't eliminate all the ads if they're baked in ads and announcements like this one. You still hear Lizzie when she pops in and Oliver Twist and Edgar Allan Poe and Lady Macbeth for example. We won't take those out. But you won't hear those radio style ads that come. When I say let's take a break, you will be ad free for that blissful few seconds where we hear the little intro music and then you hear the music coming back. Nothing in the middle. We're trying this out. Hopefully there aren't technical issues that stop us but if there are, we will tackle them. And the other exciting news in terms of supporting the show. Oh, that [e-mail] Literature by the way, if I didn't say that. The other exciting news in terms of supporting the show is that we're going to England on tour and you can join. Join us. The History of Literature podcast tour featuring Jack Wilson and Emma Wilson, by the way show's producer. You get to meet her too. It's set up for May in 2026. The good folks at John Shores Travel have put together the itinerary and it is very exciting. They know what they're doing, they know how to make a tour comfortable. This is where they pick you up at the airport and take you to the hotel. And you don't have to do a thing. You, you don't have to worry about a thing. All you have to do is enjoy the events. And there's a couple of times where you get some options like okay, you can either return to your hotel room now or you can go shopping or you can come with us to a bookstore, that kind of thing. But the events are the key. We'll be eating our meals together and riding on the train together. And we'll be going to Shakespeare's Globe Theater and we're going to Oxford and its famous libraries and bookstores and meeting up with guests of the show who are eager to join us in our little tour. And we'll be going to Charles Dickens's house in London and Bath where we'll see all of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley's haunts. And I don't know how you like to travel. Some people cram their days and squeeze them in for everything they have. I got to get every minute out of I gotta be doing something every minute. My father in law was like that. Love to squeeze his travel in and be active and busy every minute of every day. And some people like a slow approach with downtime for reading and writing or walks in the park or taking an afternoon nap. A few activities, but not too many. Well, the good news is our agenda is flexible. We'll have events you won't want to miss, maybe a lunch, maybe a tour, maybe a walking tour. But other events are more optional. Maybe we'll have a breakfast at the hotel in the morning, then a guided tour at some inspiring place. We'll have lunch together and then the afternoon where you can either retreat to your room or go off on your own somewhere. If you need a little break from the group, you could have a little downtime, little me time, or you time, I guess I should say. Or if you're feeling up for more, you can join me on a trip to some other place and then we'll get back together for dinner and we'll have guests waiting to greet us. It's going to be great. If you want to learn more about how you can join us, participate. You can go to John Shors Travel S H O R S Travel and find the Jack Wilson History of Literature Podcast itinerary. Or we have a link to it if you go to History of Literature. Okay. Okay. So we as you know, if you've been listening, we're running a feature, 25 for 25, the 25 greatest books of All Time. In honor of the year 2025. We are up to number 18, the Bible, which kind of exposes some issues with the list and the nature of list making. I've taken this list from the Internet. It's a compilation of lists, but for many people this would be the greatest book. And for others, it wouldn't even be in the top 100 or a thousand. If you're a religious person in the Judeo Christian tradition. Well, I guess I should be even more precise because Bible here is inclusive of both the Old and New Testament. So it's really mostly the Christian tradition. If you're a Christian and you believe in this book as the word of God, it's strange to see it listed as number 18. It's strange to rank it at all, frankly. But let's set that aside and just focus on the book. We've focused on it before in various ways as literature. I think we had a very early episode on the Bible with a coda on just the Book of Job, which is a fascinating book from the Old Testament. And for many, for many, it's the greatest of all books in the Bible because the Book of Job gets at the nature of faith in God and explores the deepest questions about God, about what faith means for those who love the New Testament. We looked at that specifically with the help of Professor Kyle kieffer in episode 41. That's an old favorite of mine. Not as many people come across that one today. It's so deep in our archives. But if you like the New Testament, check it out. More recently we looked at the Bible as a book, as an incredibly amorphous book used by various societies at various times. That was in episode 634 with Bruce Gordon. And we've looked at the Christmas story. Starting to lose my voice here. We've looked at the Christmas story and different characters in the Bible and different features of the Bible like the parable. We did a whole episode on that. Those are all in our archives. So today, what I thought I would do in honor of it being the number 18 book on our list is to give you 10 takes on the Bible from various literary figures. What have writers of books said about this amazing book? So Here we go. 10 quotes about the Bible. We begin with with Augustine or Augustine, another fellow we've covered here. I think we did a two part episode on him early in our the life of our show. His early takes on the New Testament and Christianity were highly influential and continue to be. And he said the faith will totter if the authority of the Holy Scriptures loses its hold on men. We must surrender ourselves to the authority of Holy Scripture for it can neither mislead nor be misled. Hmm. The Bible as infallible. We say that sometimes about the Constitution too. These are the words we must listen to. These are how we're gonna. It can neither mislead nor be misled. Well, is that true? I suspect a lot of listeners will agree or want to agree more on this later because it's not always easy, as we'll see with some of our other writers make this point. And also, even though we surrender ourselves to the authority, if we follow Augustine, that doesn't mean that it's as riveting to read as, let's say, your average mystery or romance novel. And John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim's a 17th century Christian allegory, said something similar. His quote is, this is number two quote. I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under. And yet at another time, the whole Bible hath been to me as dry as a stick. Dry as a stick. That's dry. Kierkegaard, that devout Danish dreamer, gives us quote number three. He said back in the 19th century, to read the Bible as God's word, one must read it with his heart in his mouth, on tiptoe with eager expectancy in conversation with God to read the Bible thoughtlessly or carelessly or academically or professionally is not to read the Bible as God's word. As one reads it, as a love letter is read, then one reads it as the word of God, end quote. And then presumably it will not be as dry as a stick. Also in the 19th century, Mark Twain said quote number four. He said, it ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me. It's the parts that I do understand. End quote. Now that's a good quote. You might wonder why I didn't include the quote, the famous Mark Twain quote. The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible. End quote. Well, it's because he probably didn't say that. It's often attributed to him. He didn't say it. And guess who else didn't say it? Oscar Wilde. Sorry, Internet. Find someone else to misattribute the clever quotes to. Why not me? Jack Wilson. I could use the publicity. Charles Dickett. Moving on. Charles Dickens wrote in a letter to his youngest child who was leaving for Australia, quote, I put a New Testament among your books for the very same reasons and with the very same hopes that made me write an easy account of it for you when you were a little child. Because it is the best book that ever was or will be known in the world and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be guided. End quote. That's number five. We did an episode on Dickens version of the Bible with our friend Scott Carter, who wrote a play about the three men who all wrote their own versions of the Bible. Jefferson, Tolstoy and Dickens. It was a fascinating window into the minds of three thinkers. Number six. This one hits home. I'm one of those people who are who is inclined to say, well, say what you want about the Bible, but you don't need to be a believer to recognize its importance to Western civilization or its greatness as a book, its impact on the world, its literary greatness. And T.S. eliot comes along to say, I could fulminate against the men of letters who have gone into ecstasies over the Bible as literature, the Bible as the noblest monument of English prose. Those who talk of the Bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity, End quote. I feel seen, although only in part. I don't view it as being a monument over the grave of Christianity when I view it as literature. I think there's room for admiring The Bible as literature, even as Christianity, is well out of the grave, or hasn't been even been in the grave, alive and kicking. And still, the book is great literature. It has words, it reads like literature. We can analyze it as we can assess it as literature. That's an enhancement in my view, T.S. okay, anyway, another Eliot, George, writing earlier than T.S. had a view different from his. This is quote number seven. In a letter to her father, George Eliot wrote, she was Marianne Evans in real life. She wrote of the Bible. Quote, I regard these writings as histories consisting of mingled truth, fiction. A lot of the attention on the Bible has focused on readers, what it means to be a human being reading the Bible and how humans, flawed as they are, can sometimes take positive messages from the Bible and sometimes not. This is in contradiction to Augustine's admonition that we should all read the Bible because it can never fail us. Well, what if we fail it? Our final three quotes are all a kind of variation on that in our contemporary world. The columnist Dan Savage put it in kind of the clearest form. He said, the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it, end quote. It's hard to argue with. That's a. A good and modern take. But guess who got there first. Shakespeare, as he put it in quote number nine. He said, the devil can cite scripture for his purpose, end quote. Now, a little pause here to say that I'm not counting John Lennon's comments about the Bible, but you may recall that after he was banned for saying that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, which he then had to explain further when the south in the United States erupted in a fury, and part of his explanation was, well, Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me, end quote. I didn't include that one because it's not specifically about the Bible. It's about the teachings of the Bible. But you can see the same thing that we've been discussing. The Bible can be read and misread, used and misused, which is at the heart of Our quote number 10, some words written by Ambrose Bierce. His Devil's dictionary does not have an entry for the Bible. Actually, as an aside, Flaubert, in his dictionary of received terms, does have an entry for the Bible. The entry is Bible, the oldest book in the world. Let's make that number nine and a half. We can make John Lennon's quote number nine and a third, make Flaubert's quote number nine and two thirds. But let's do Number ten. Bierce discussed the Bible in his entry for Christian, which we will make our number 10 Christian noun one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. Which does take us back to Augustine. Make me chaste, dear God, but not yet. The Bible is full of wonderful examples of how to live a good, decent, pious life helping others, and I hope that you're following it carefully, neighbor. Let me impose it upon you and shame you if you're not. Meanwhile, well, I have my flaws. We're all human, aren't we? Don't you know that's part of it? My sins will be forgiven when I loudly ask for God's forgiveness. That's Bierce's point. That's a question in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, the guy who really wants everyone else to follow the Bible. He also included a poem that was written by his fictional alter ego gj, which stood for Father Casalaska Jape, who's kind of a sarcastic cleric, and we will end our look at the Bible with this poem. I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and lo, the godly multitudes walked to and fro beneath in Sabbath garments, fitly clad with pious mien appropriately sad, while all the church bells made a solemn din, a fire alarm to those who lived in sin. Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below with tranquil face upon that holy show a tall spare figure in a robe of white, whose eyes diffused a melancholy light. God keep you stranger. I exclaimed. You are no doubt your habit shows it from afar, and yet I entertain the hope that you, like these good people, are a Christian too. He raised his eyes and with a look so stern it made me, with a thousand blushes burn replied. His manner with disdain was spiced. What I a Christian? No, indeed, I'm Christ. Christ watching the hypocrites. Well, speaking of hypocrites, Samuel Pepys has often been accused of that, or at least of having multiple sides to him. He was the man about town, the capable government worker, and the skirt chasing hound whose flirtations now read to us like harassment or worse. Kate Loveman has done the homework, reading the diaries and writing about them, and she's going to join us to help make sense of this fascinating figure and his incredible literary output. After this. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Hey folks, if you're like me, you Find yourself looking for help in some strange places, like the woman who Cuts my hair. Very nice person. But if you're dealing with serious problems like anxiety, depression or other clinical issues, you need guidance from a credentialed therapist. At BetterHelp, you fill out a short questionnaire and they match you with one of their more than 30,000 online professionals. They have a strong track record of getting the match right, but of course you can always pause your subscription or switch therapists at any time and at no extra cost. It's a system designed to help you fit therapy into your busy life. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of Expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp, our listeners get 10% off their first month of at betterhelp.com literature that's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com literature When did making plans get this complicated?

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It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by State Farm Insurance may all seem the same on the surface, but having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like getting a speech from your third cousin's plus one at your wedding. When you needed a speech from your best man, you wouldn't settle for just any speech. So don't settle for just any insurance. When it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is the real deal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Okay. Joining me now is Kate Loveman, who is professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester and an internationally recognized expert on Samuel Pepys and restoration literature. She's here today to discuss her new book, the Strange History of Samuel Pepys Diary. Kate Loveman, welcome to the History of Literature.

[B]

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[A]

So, Kate, you call this probably the most famous diary in the world, and yet almost no one has actually read it. Let's start with the book itself and talk about why that might be when was it written, what does it chronicle, and what has made it so difficult for both scholars and general readers to absorb.

[B]

So I think it would be the most famous diary in the English language because I think Anne Frank might, actually. But Samuel Pepys was writing his diary in the 1660s and he wrote it in shorthand, which meant it was very difficult for people to read. That was part of the point of writing it in shorthand. So that has really affected its publication history. It wasn't published until more than a century after he finished writing it, and even then people were kind of struggling with the language. So the most famous diary in the English language, written by a man who was living in London during some of the major events that people would recognise from English history. So the Great Fire of London. Samuel Pepys writes what is probably the best eyewitness account of that event. He talks about the plague coming to London and seeing the streets, and in between that, he talks about his personal life in great detail. And this is something for which the diary has become increasingly famous, partly because bits of Pepys personal life were too scandalous to be published. The diary has this very strange and interesting history as a publication.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I want to get to all of that. A couple of other details I had here to make sure we noted it. It was started January 1, 1660, when he was 26, and he ended up writing about a million and a quarter words at 1.25 million words. And then he stopped in May 1669, because he feared that writing it was harming his sight. Is that right?

[B]

Yes. So he feared that he was going blind, he was having increasing trouble writing. And so really regretfully and mournfully, he stopped his diary. He said it was like seeing himself go into the grave to have to stop it.

[A]

Okay, so who was Samuel Pepys? What kind of family background did he come from?

[B]

So he was born in 1633 in London. His father was a tailor and his mother had come down from Gloucestershire to London to work as a servant. So he wasn't from a wealthy background, but he did well at school, he was able to get scholarships and he went on to study at Cambridge, and that gave him a claim to be a gentleman of kind of higher education than his parents. He also had, although his immediate family were not wealthy, he had one very influential relative, a man called Sir Edward Montague, who had become the Earl of Sandwich. And Montagu was doing very well under Oliver Cromwell's government during the Civil wars. And Montagu helped Pepys along in life. He employed him initially when he came out of university and then he helped him to get an influential post at the Restoration. So Samuel Pepys, in 1660, when he starts his diary, is a clerk at the Exchequer, he's married he's been married for about five years at that point to a woman called Elizabeth, who is the daughter of a French refugee. And they are, as Pepys says, believed to be doing well, but are indeed very poor. In 1660, Charles II returns to the throne. Sir Edward Montagu helps Charles get his throne back, and as a result of that, Montagu is able to get Pepys a job in the Navy. So this is partly the making of Samuel Pepys. He really takes to working in the Navy. He's a very good bureaucrat. And so the story that he's telling, the life that he's writing during the diary, is partly about his career, about his naval efforts. After the diary ends, he goes on to become extremely influential within the Navy and a very wealthy man.

[A]

At the time that he was writing his diary, how was he viewed by his peers? Was he recognized as a reliable bureaucrat, or was he viewed as a brilliant up and comer, or what was his reputation around town?

[B]

So we mostly know what he tells us he thought other people were saying about one of the things he talks about in the diary. It's clear that at the start of the diary he is somebody who is not of much notice. By the end, his efforts and a good deal of luck have made him somebody who has the ear of the heir to the throne, who is increasingly able to influence Navy business and is well worth knowing if you're a merchant or if you've got anything to do with the navy. And the navy was a big industry. So if we'd asked his neighbours, who were also his colleagues because he lived in work lodgings, what they thought of him, they might have told us a few. He feuded with a lot of them over various things, but they would probably have told us that he was somebody who they were increasingly wary about annoying or getting on the wrong side of, that he was useful, that he was an upstart socially, because we do hear criticism of that from various sources. Yeah. So I don't think anybody would have recognized him as brilliant during the diary period.

[A]

Yeah. And we know a lot about his inner life and his life behind closed doors, so to speak. Would the version of Pepys that we see in his diary have shocked his friends and acquaintances, or would they have viewed it as this is what we would expect from someone like him in his position at this time?

[B]

Well, there are quite a lot of different versions of Pepys in the diary, so I think if we'd asked his neighbours whether they were surprised by the fact that he was having extramarital relationships, they would probably have said no. If we'd asked the people in his household, they would not have been very surprised because he was not particularly discreet a lot of the time. So the version of Pepys that we see in the diary, he worked very hard on the one hand to conceal. He's kind of writing his diary partly to sort of understand how other people see him and to work on how he projects himself socially. We get quite a lot of what he thinks other people are saying or perceiving him and his efforts to adjust that to what extent, that actually has much bearing on what they were really thinking. That's really difficult to say.

[A]

Yeah. So let's talk about what motivated him to write a diary and why it was so important to him and that he kept it up for so long and felt so bad when he stopped writing it. There's a lot of different reasons why someone might write a diary, and maybe there was more than one reason. The idea of trying to track how people think of you and work out the best way to help yourself sort of climb socially and professionally is a really interesting one. But what about just the basic one of. Was he one of those people who just wanted to have a record of his life and be able to go back to it and remember who he met with on which day and that kind of thing?

[B]

His diary certainly had a very practical purpose. At various points for him, he tells us that he's writing things down. So if anybody challenges him about what's happened, for instance, in relation to his work, he's got a record. There's not a lot of evidence that he did go back and read over his diary in detail, though it does seem, from the way that he's writing, that that's part of what he intended to do. He was capturing moments, sometimes moments of joy. He increasingly talks at the end of his diary about wanting to record his pleasures.

[A]

What about the reason of people find it therapeutic or a way of sort of thinking about the day that's just passed and looking ahead to what the plan is for tomorrow and that kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah, he's definitely using his diary to sort of strategise and to reflect back and also to vent. So being therapeutic, you know, he doesn't seem to actually have any close friends for most of the diary period. There's maybe one or two people occasionally. So one of the things he seems to be using his diary for is to kind of vent when he's angry. He has some fairly sarcastic things to say about his colleagues. He uses it to help him manage his health, to think about how to plan for that. He's very, very worried about. He had a major operation before the diary starts for bladder stones, and he's very worried about a recurring that might recur. It had nearly killed him the first time. So he writes quite a lot about his toilet habits, let's say, which quite carefully, and things that help him in terms of his physical health.

[A]

Right. Did he think he was a great person? I mean, was he thinking, this is important for someone with my kind of genius to be recording these thoughts and leaving something behind for posterity to remember what a great man I was?

[B]

He doesn't say that in the diary. And I think he might have not been thinking of himself as a great man at that time. He does use the word genius to describe himself, but he uses it in the 17th century sense, which means, like his character, his personality.

[A]

Right.

[B]

He will say things like, you know, it would. It's right for my genius that I think about writing history of the Navy or, you know, composing music suits with my genius, meaning my character.

[A]

Yeah. Now, he thinks. It's also not clear exactly. I mean, on the one hand, he wrote it in shorthand and he wanted to keep it private. He knew it would have been scandalous. And he talks about, you said, toilet habits. I've got bowel movements down here. He talks about sex and things that would have been considered obscene. And yet he did leave it to his college at Cambridge and he must have felt like there was either literary or historical merit in it.

[B]

Yes. He would have known, I think, even while writing it, that there was real historical merit in it because he was eyewitness to these big events.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And he does start his diary on the 1st of January, 1660, which is the start of a new month, new year, new decade, and at a point in English history where it's not entirely clear at all whether England is going to go back to being a republic or it's going to be a monarchy or quite what's going to happen? So he was certainly thinking about the diary as something that was documenting major important historical events. When he left it to his college, he left it with his library. And that, I think, is really important to understanding how he thought his diary would be used, because his library, which he'd compiled across his lifetime, was a record of his interests, naval material in there, for example, but it was also a record of his society. He collected sermons and ballads and all sorts of literature that people always, at the time, didn't think of as being worth preserving.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So he seems to be thinking of the library both as something that will glorify him. He tells his college that he wants it to be called the Bibliotheca peepsiana, and it's got to be preserved for posterity in exactly the way that he left it. So nobody can change.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Books will take them away. The bookcases that he left, they're part of it. So you're getting Samuel Pepys traveling down the ages in a kind of time capsule.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. It almost seems like his view of what it means to have been alive, that what was it to be a human being at a particular time in a particular place. That seems like it's an indication that that really felt important to him.

[B]

Yes, he was, I think, had a kind of expansive sense of what history meant, and he's certainly interested in kind of preserving his own experience in a really wide way. That, I think, is why the diary is in there. He clearly felt very attached to his diary. It would have been very difficult for him to destroy it. That would have been painful. But it was also very dangerous to keep it for most of his life. It could have been used against him. So he had to balance the risk during his life of keeping it, and he then had to balance the risk of leaving it to posterity. I imagine that he didn't think or didn't want it to be published in full in the way that we read it today. But because he's so interested in naval history and because he wanted to write a naval history himself, he was probably thinking that this would be useful to people in understanding his role in the Navy and in understanding the growth of the Navy under Charles II and James ii. But it also seems that, you know, the diary does speak to this other function of the library, which is that it's about preserving society. So in the diary, we have all sorts of people's lives preserved who are not Samuel Pepys. We've got servants, we've got enslaved people, we've got women, we've got courtiers. You know, it's the spectrum of society. And his library does a bit of that as well. It's sort of. So the diary has kind of earned its place in this library.

[A]

Right. So how reliable is he when you're reading it? Do you have to view everything through, you know, understand that he had, you know, maybe some blind spots or maybe some X's to grind and so on? When he talks about historical accounts, does it seem like he's like, is he a Good reporter effect based. And when he talks about his personal life, is he honest and forthcoming and in a way that you feel like he has a lot of credibility.

[B]

He's a good source on history, as we understand that term. So he tells you what he thinks is true when it comes to the news that's arriving in the city or what's going on. Unlike some diarists, he's not going back to change his account to suit what actually happened. So from that perspective, he is very reliable. He is somebody who is a very engaging writer to read. And for that reason it can be quite difficult to spot when he's got blind spots sometimes it's very obvious. So when the diary was first published, people were very struck that Peake seemed to be very vain and very fond of his clothes. But other things, like when he writes about his relationships with women or relationships is often a sort of generous way of describing it. Assaults on women. He will not say, today I forced a servant to unwillingly have sexual relationship relations with me. He will put it in terms that make it quite difficult to spot. That's what's going on. Yeah, and use. Yeah. He uses phrases like I did what I would. And you have to kind of look at the wider context in the diary to, to often understand who these people are, what exactly is happening, what the power relationships are there. So reading an episode in the diary is often a case of kind of trying to map it against everything else to try and gather the information that Pepys is kind of assuming that we know because he's writing for himself.

[A]

And how deep does he go in terms of psychology? I mean, do we recognize in him the kind of candid, tell all memoirist that we might expect today? Or is he kind of describing exterior events and, and leaving it to us to determine who he really was and what really made him tick?

[B]

That's a really good question and one that's quite tricky to answer. So his focus is often on exterior things, but he does give us his viewpoint. He does talk about how he feels. He's not sort of analyzing himself psychologically in ways that we might sort of associate. I think he's often thinking about how to justify and explain actions rather than trying to interrogate himself or think carefully about why they happened. So he will reflect critically on what he's done, but that's often in terms of the immediate consequences. So more about shame than guilt, for example. Quite often he doesn't want people to know things or be caught doing things. Rather than that he's telling us that he regrets doing them in a great deal of detail.

[A]

Right, Right. Okay, let's take a quick break and then come back with more from Kate Loveman. If you thought goldenly breaded McDonald's chicken couldn't get more golden, think Golder because new sweet and smoky special edition gold sauce is here made for your chicken favorites. And participate at McDonald's for a limited time.

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Greenlight.Com Spotify okay, we're back. So Kate, what initially drew you to Peeps and his diary? I could imagine just someone being really interested in the era and then finding that here was this great chronicler of it. Or I could imagine someone discovering the chronicler and becoming interested in the era after that. Or what was your path to Pepys?

[B]

I was interested in restoration literature and history and I was particularly interested in what people were doing to pass information or what they were reading. Yeah, Pepys is a great source on this.

[A]

Yeah, I was going to say you found the right guy.

[B]

I went looking for the book that someone must have written about Samuel Pepys and his reading behavior and I couldn't find it, which meant I had to write it. And that was the start of a slippery slope because once you start writing about Pepys, first of all, everybody wants you to write some more about Pepys. And secondly, there's a whole lot to find. So it's not just that he has this diary, he has a lot of other papers that I got interested in. I'm quite easily. Pepys was curious about a lot of things and I'm quite happy to follow him in those things that he was interested in.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And then you became, I mean, how many people do you think there are who know Pepys's shorthand?

[B]

For example, I know there's about at least two other people in the UK and I think there are several more around the world. So I would guess maybe about 10 people.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. What did learning that do for you? Can you give us an example of something that the transcriptions of the shorthand might fail to capture, but that by knowing the shorthand you're able to discern.

[B]

Yeah. I should mention first that it's really unusual for people who read Pepys to read his diary. It's quite difficult to access. I worked for a long time on Pepys without actually learning the shorthand or reading the diary. When I finally did start to look at it properly, one of the things actually, when you look at the page of Pepys diary, it's mostly in shorthand symbols. But he writes certain words in longhand and those are often names, they leap off the page. But one of the things that struck me that I hadn't realised is that he kind of uses his longhand almost as a way of writing things in bold or capital letters. And those are not always the things that you might expect. So he has this famous account of the coronation of Charles II where he explains that he got up at 4 o' clock in the morning and went to bags a seat and finally the king turned up, but he couldn't. Pepys couldn't really see or hear him. And eventually he said, I had a great list to piss, meaning he had a great desire to piss. He has been waiting there for many hours by this point. So he leaves and he sees the crowds and he sees his wife. And this is all fascinating when you look at that page. Piss is written in longhand. That's kind of puzzling because that is the word that you think that you might want to be discreet about.

[A]

Yeah, right, right.

[B]

Also really easy to write in shorthand. There's no reason to write it in longhand.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So then you have to start thinking, why is he doing that? You know, what is. What mattered to him in this experience? What he makes leap off the page, among other things, is this need to exit quickly and. Yeah, probably because that triggers this whole range of experiences that he has as a result. So he seems to be using longhand in his shorthand as a kind of way of making a pressy, sort of enabling him to find events very easily and sort of summarize them. So all of that is missing in printed editions. You don't get the sense of what's leaping off the page literally. Not literally, but kind of very clearly present.

[A]

Right, right. So are there copies of the shorthand version or are you working from the original?

[B]

So I'm working mostly from. We have a microfilm of the short. Of the short film.

[A]

A microfilm. It hasn't been digitized. It's not something that you can access on the Internet.

[B]

No. There are Very few images of it available. Sort of, I guess probably less than 10 images available of it online the last time I did a count. So when I really want to know what something says in the shorthand, I can look at the microfilm images, but also request photographs which are much shorter. Shorthand is quite difficult to read from microfilm.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

But I have been really privileged to actually go and use the diary to go and see it and turn the pages and check things. So that was really great.

[A]

So it's still at Cambridge, it's still in the library?

[B]

Yes, the library actually is currently being refurbished, so it's unfortunately closed. But yes, the diary lives where Pepys wanted it to live in the circumstances.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Effectively left it to his college.

[A]

So what is that like to go see it? I mean, I'm guessing you're wearing gloves or something, or like, what is the. Is it a small room that it's in? Is it behind a lot of security? Are you breaking in, like Mission Impossible, where they're scanning your retinas and everything before you're allowed access?

[B]

No, it's in a 17th century building. So the facilities, you go up a winding staircase to the top and into this room. That's a fairly small room and has peeps bookcases in it. And if you're fortunate, the diary is. Is put out for you and often they set it up so you don't have to do much page turning. If you are turning pages, you don't wear gloves because that's more likely to damage the pages than pages get torn when people wear gloves. So, yeah, you essentially you. I'm extremely careful and try to touch it as little as possible.

[A]

Right. Oh, man. Okay, so tell us about the strange history of Samuel Pepys diary. What story did you set out to tell in this book?

[B]

Well, I got interested in how Pepys came to be, at least in the uk, a kind of figurehead for this period. How do you write a secret diary and then end up being extremely famous for your secret diary?

[A]

Yeah, right, right.

[B]

And also, Samuel Pepys is taught to six year olds here when we do the Great Fire, so he's kind of the gateway into Restoration history. So I was interested in how people learned about Pepys and the different kind of versions of him that they were familiar with. And I also began to realize as I was doing this that the diary as a document, had a very strange history, in the sense that until 1970 it was not all in print. So a lot of our ideas about Pepys have been formed from incomplete Censored versions. Versions of the diary. And still today, because those are. The versions are out of copyright. It's quite likely that if you're reading a text online, it would be a Victorian censored version. The versions of Pepys have come out of different versions of the diary and Pepys has a kind of reputation of a sort of. I guess a way to sum up would be that he's really entertaining and funny and somebody that you laugh at on the one hand and. But on the other hand, he's also regarded as being a great naval administrator. People wouldn't hesitate to call him a great man.

[A]

Right. And a great eyewitness of these seminal events in history.

[B]

Yes. So we often read Pepys in extracts. We read the Great Fire, we read the Plague, the Coronation, quite often censored extracts. You not likely to get, for example, if you're a school child, the bit about peeps sniffing out for a wee. So our version of the ways that we understand his diary and the ways that we understand him as a sort of historical personality have been affected by access to this text.

[A]

Right. And so what happened to it during that first century, or even longer before it became published? Was it just. I mean, were select scholars who knew about it and were reading it, or historians who were learning from it, or was it. Was it kind of locked in the famous Indiana Jones archive of closed up boxes and crates in a giant warehouse kind of thing?

[B]

The short version would be that it was sitting on the shelves at his library, but nobody was very interested in it.

[A]

Yeah. Right. Because they couldn't read it. You couldn't open it and just start reading.

[B]

It wasn't very obvious what it was. So we do know that at least one person came across it in the 1720s, which was shortly after it arrived in the library. Library. But he couldn't, he didn't have time to read it, so he left. And the next time that we know that anybody was looking at it was in the very early 19th century, when there was an initial attempt to see if there was anything worth publishing that seems to have stalled, that didn't get very far at all. Possibly because they, having looked at volume one of the diary, they realised that it wasn't going to redound to Pepys credit necessarily. Some of the people who were interested in publishing it were his distant relatives. Then there was an. It wasn't until about 1818 that there was the attempt to actually publish the diary which did get it published began. So Pepys finishes his diary in 1669, he dies in 1703. It's in Magdalen College in the 1720s. And then it's there for almost 100 years before anybody actually gets around to transcribing it in full and realising what it says.

[A]

Right. And what kind of treatment did the first editors give the book?

[B]

They were, on the one hand, very excited by what they saw. The main editor was a man called Lord Braybrooke, who couldn't read the shorthand, but when he was given a transcription of, for example, the Great Fire, he wrote, this is very curious next to it. So there were bits that leapt out. The person who was doing the transcribing was a student called John Smith. So most of the work on this, the hard labour, the really difficult bits, those were done by a student being paid. And John Smith kept coming across the bits of Pepys's diary that were regarded as obscene and scandalous initially. So I should say that Pepys has certain ways of disguising some of these passages. So he writes in shorthand and then, as the diary goes on, when he's talking about extramarital relationships or sex, he often switches languages in shorthand. So he'll start with French and then move into Spanish and do all sorts of things. And then when that isn't sufficient, apparently he also throws in random shorthand symbols. So John Smith found himself confronted not just with shorthand, but with Pepys ways of ciphering shorthand. He initially just wrote that what he was reading was objectionable in the transcript and didn't translate it. But as he went on, he did transcribe this material. So when this was handed over to Lord Braybrooke, Lord Braybrooke was, of course not going to publish. Some of this material was just too obscene to publish. You could not have done it in Georgian England, at least not and published it and not be prosecuted. But a lot of the material Braybrooke thought was just unsuitable, you know, wasn't fit for genteel consumption. It didn't reflect well on Pepys. And also he thought that Pepys was recording a lot of trifling observations. So the version that Braibrooke produced and Braybrooke was the man who did the selecting, essentially, was much shorter than Pepys's actual diary, which is understandable, but it also cuts out most of Pepys personal life. It's really about the. The King, the court, some events, like theatre, theatrical productions, much less about Pepys home life and Pepys's shuttling around everyday London. The kind of things that we actually really value in the diary today were often not in this first edition.

[A]

And why do we value those things today?

[B]

Well, we've. There's been this, partly because of the diary, this interest in social history. So we're not just interested in what the King said and then what happens. We understand that if you want a fuller version of history, you have to factor in what public opinion, for example, which is what Pepys is great at talking about. And we also think, I guess, pretty much nowadays, that we should have a sense of what is going on in the rest of society that you can't. Even if you want to focus on the grand narrative, you have to understand what people across the society were doing, how they contributed. And we also tend to think that people. People's stories further down the social scale are worthwhile in themselves.

[A]

Right, right. So we might say, you know, a historian might say, well, at this time, the average couple got married at such and such age and they might have had two servants in their household. But to know, well, what was it like for those people living in the house? How did they get along? What was their dynamic, who. Who spoke up and who was quiet and who could change things, you know, change the atmosphere of the house and so on. And Pepys gives us a window into that kind of thing.

[B]

Yes, he's very good at things like how difficult it is to hire the servants, how the servants bargain for their wages, all sorts of kinds of details that tell you not just about him, but start to give you a window onto other people's lives. If you were a servant in a household in Seething Lane, where he lived, could you leave if you didn't like it? What would be the consequences of that? How might you find somebody to get married to? That kind of detail.

[A]

Yeah. And how well does it hold up from a modern perspective? I mean, are you reading it and thinking, well, he seems like a man of his era and I'm willing to overlook a few things, knowing that I'm not going to judge him by 21st century standards. Or do you read it and think, oh, geez, this guy, he's his own worst enemy, or he's doing things that makes it really difficult for me to like him, even recognizing that things might have been different in that era.

[B]

It's helpful, I think, to. What I've tried to do a lot of when I was researching this book, is to try and work out what people were, what the views of the time actually were. Part of the difficulty of evaluating Samuel Pepys behaviour, if we want to put him at the centre of this story, is that we fall back on ideas. So you could say things like, oh, the Restoration, that was a really bad time. Everybody was behaving really badly. Samuel Pepys was of his time. When you look at where some of that information is coming from, it is often the diary of Samuel Pepys. You can look at things like court reports, you can look at other people's diaries and try and understand what the actual. For example, the norms around social and sexual conduct were. What does it mean when people use certain kinds of sexual language, for example? So that's what I've been trying to do in this. It is a part of the history of the diary is people grappling with the fact that Samuel Pepys can be extremely engaging and appealing, but he can do some really appalling things. And how do you deal with that? And I think one of the interesting things about reading the diary is that you can see yourself dealing with that and try and think about, well, if I'm letting Pepys off, am I letting myself off or am I letting other people in society off? How does the way that we respond to Pepys help us understand how we respond to other things in our lives?

[A]

Can you read it and feel like you're able to side with some of the people who are around Peeps and feel like, well, I know that his wife, for example, I can see her point of view even if Peeps isn't giving it to me directly. I can understand that at this point. You know, they were rightfully upset with him for what he did or he had to hide this because he. He'd be ashamed if they knew about it and that kind of. Or does it seem like they're too opaque to kind of be able to side with them or see things from their point of view?

[B]

With his wife, we have quite a lot of information about her from the diary. So although it's coming from Peeps, there is information there that kind of helps you piece together her responses and why she's reacting as she does. People have been doing that, you know, at least since the 1840s and further back, people are very interested in Elizabeth Pepys's view. They've liked to imagine what would happen if she wrote her diary.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

With other people, it's much more difficult. We only have glimpses of them. So there you. I mean, you always have to be very careful about assuming you can understand people's viewpoints and indeed, Pepys is included. But yes, there is information there that helps you piece together how viewpoints that are not Peeps's Particularly with his wider family. He thinks that he manages them, but actually, if you look carefully, you can see they're often managing him. There's often coordinated efforts going on to manage our powerful but rather difficult relative.

[A]

How did he view his diary? And we've talked a little bit that he. On the one hand, he knew it was dangerous for him to have it released, but he did donate it to his college and so on. But do you think he'd be surprised to know that it's something that is still being read and excerpted and so on for the next 300 years?

[B]

People have wondered this since it was first published. People were imagining what Pepys might think. I think he would be pleased that we are still talking about him. I think he would be rather annoyed that what we are doing is privileging his diary and that he's named because of that, rather than because of what he regarded as his great work, which is. Which was his naval work. The things he'd done to establish the phrase that's often used for him and which may have actually come from him as being the father of the British Navy. So I think he would be. He would have been extremely crossed for much of the Victorian period because they were having a really good time laughing at him and making fun of him. I think today, the idea that he is, you know, the two most recognizable figures from the restoration of King Charles and Samuel Pepys. I'm not sure Pepys would have been unhappy about that, but he might have.

[A]

Been unhappy about how. Yeah. And about why. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Okay. And so when you look at the different ways that he's been treated and viewed during the different eras, does it seem like the differences jump out at you, or do you think there's something shared about the way that we look at him in his diary that kind of unites us in the way that we think of individuals from that era or. Or diaries in particular.

[B]

I think the striking things tend to be the similarities rather than differences. So you get people saying repeatedly, samuel Pepys diary brings the past close to me. And that happens whether they're writing in 1640 or 1940. Another thing that was very striking, and I was looking back, is that that in times of crisis, in Britain at least, people often turn to Samuel Pepys diary, and they do this on a kind of personal level, but also in a kind of societal or propaganda level. So in the 1940s, when Second World War was happening, people were reading Samuel Pepys for entertainment, for escapism, but they were also comparing what he had gone through in the 1660s to what they.

[A]

Were going through, the Blitz.

[B]

The Blitz, yes. There was a moment in the Blitz which was referred to as the Second Great Fire of London.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There had also been an evacuation which happened during the plague. And so that kind of moment, Pepys Diary often seems to be comforting to people. And it's comforting partly because it shows you can get through these kind of things.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

It also seems to comfort people a lot because Pepys isn't some great hero. Or at least the version of Pepys that is more comforting is the version who is flawed, who does complain about, you know, the fact that the price of eels has gone up when a heroic person would be more worried about the fate of the nation, for example.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

This happened again during the COVID pandemic. People turned to Samuel Pepys diary and are reading it to find out about what happens in quarantine, you know, sort of for lessons, but also for kind of comfort, for ways of thinking about what they were going through and kind of being reassured.

[A]

Yeah. And to say this is the reaction that I'm having where I'm. I'm thinking about things on a grand scale, but also on just the. How do I manage this day to day and hour by hour. I have a predecessor. That this is a human way to respond to an event like this.

[B]

Yes. Yeah.

[A]

And that London can survive and that it can kind of self heal and that it's been through a lot and can hopefully withstand whatever else it has to go through.

[B]

Yes. People often think about a very personal level, but also in a kind of. Yeah. Especially Londoners. A real connection to what Pepys is describing and finding it. That it is part of London's history, that bad things happen and you get through them.

[A]

Right. Okay. Well, the book is called the Strange History of Samuel Pepys Diary. Kate Loveman, thank you so much for joining me on the history of Literature.

[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Caitlin Love Men for joining me. We will be back soon with some Haruki Murakami, also some Harlem Renaissance and some stories for Halloween and much more. In the meantime, remember to check out the History of Literature podcast [e-mail] or at the website for John Shore's travel. We'd love to have you join us in May of 2026 for our inaugural trip through Literary England. But the signups are only going to be open through September, so you've got limited time. Please do EK now so you don't miss out and our new low ed version of the Patreon account. If you want to be a Patreon member and donate a small monthly contribution to the History of Literature podcast, you can find information about [e-mail] literature I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Hi, I'm Rick Rebeck. And I'm Royce Yudkoff. Welcome to our chart topping podcast from the Harvard Business School. Think Big, Buy Small. This series lets you in on a special way to become an entrepreneur how to buy your own business, be your own boss, and get the financial benefits of your efforts. Entrepreneurship through acquisition involves searching for an existing, enduringly profitable small smaller business and buying it, usually from a retiring founder back for a brand new season. Our conversations are with guests from all backgrounds and different stages of the entrepreneurship through Acquisition journey from those considering whether this path is right for them all the way through to those who have sold the businesses they bought as searchers and then ran as CEOs. Thousands of smaller firms are sold every year and many people have successfully acquired an example business that is enduringly profitable. So why not you too? We've been helping students understand this less traveled path to personal and professional independence and our courses at the Harvard Business school for nearly 15 years. But you don't have to attend the Harvard Business School to take advantage of these opportunities. The goal of the Think Big Buy Small Podcast is to help you, our listeners, decide if entrepreneurship throughout acquisition is for you and if it is, to help you take your first steps on the journey to buying your own business. Follow Think Big, Buy Small wherever you get your podcasts. It's hard to remember now, but the Internet used to be fun. I can't believe how easy it is to surf the net. Surf's up on Long Shadow Breaking the Internet. We'll trace how a tool that once fueled democracy, opposition activists, or organized the march on Facebook became a weapon aimed at the very heart of it. You're watching the unraveling of our democracy right now from Longlead and prx. This is Longshadow Breaking the Internet. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.