Samuel Pepys, from The Diary

Samuel Pepys, painted by John Hayls in 1666 (National Portrait Gallery, London). Pepys is holding a piece of music that he had composed.

Samuel Pepys, painted by John Hayls in 1666 (National Portrait Gallery, London). Pepys is holding a piece of music that he had composed.

Elisabeth Pepys. This is an engraving that was copied from a portrait by John Hayls that was probably painted in 1666 as a companion piece to the painting of Samuel, above. The original painting of Elisabeth is unfortunately lost.

A small section of Pepys's diary, as written in shorthand. You can see that some proper names are spelled out fully, but otherwise, Pepys is using one of the shorthand systems of the period that he would have learned as part of his training for the civil service.
library that Pepys gave to Magdalene College, Cambridge, his alma mater. There it stayed on the shelf for generations, until early in the nineteenth century, a curious (or bored) student pulled it off the shelf and realized that there was something amazing there. The diary was translated in the nineteenth century, but editors expurgated the sexually explicit parts. (Most of the editions you can find on the web are from these expurgated texts.) It was translated and transcribed in full in the 1970s and 80s, and that edition, The Diaries of Samuel Pepys, is an amazing, enormous resource. A fun way to read Pepys today is go to Pepys’ Diary online: http://www.pepysdiary.com, which  allows you to follow the Diary day by bay.

Sample entries:

The Opening of the Diary and 1 January 1660

The Great Fire