Status Updates From The Strange History of Samu...

The ways that we understand Pepys’s diary today are shaped by the versions that we encounter and by popular traditions of reception, especially since many people know about Pepys largely by reputation rather than by reading his diary themselves. Pepys is famous as an unusually frank and detailed diarist, and as a quirky, naughty one.

The twentieth century saw the development of a veritable cultural industry around Pepys and his diary. Scholarly works, biographies, and “authentic” adaptations of the diary enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with parodies, skits, and fictions that were preoccupied with its disreputable aspects and with mocking its fame as the archetypal reliable, comprehensive source. The one fed off the other…