The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Two Volumes, Complete) by Pepys, Samuel - 1912

London and NY: J. M. Dent & Sons / E. P. Dutton & Co.. Very Good with No dust jacket as issued. 1912. First Edition. Fifth Printing. Hard Cover. Publisher's full gray cloth, gilt lettering on spines, blind-stamped medallions on covers, printed endpapers, top edges red, decorated title pages. This is the two-volume Everyman Edition, first published in 1906, this copy from the 5th printing in 1912. Complete titie is: "Diary of Samuel Pepys F.R.S. Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II and James II. The Diary deciphered by the Rev. J. Smith A.M. from the Original Shorthand M.S. in the Pepysian Library, with Notes by Richard Lord Braybrooks." "Secretary to the Admiralty during the reigns of Charles II and James II, Samuel Pepys "made no scruple of committing his most secret thoughts to paper. It is a human document, illustrating the manners and habits of the age" (Rosenbach 33:281). He commenced his diary at age 27 and, for fear of losing his eyesight, ended it nine years later, but not before filling six volumes with closely written shorthand. The diary languished in the Magdalene College library until the Reverend John Smith deciphered its text between 1819-22. It was first published in 1825. "To read Pepys is to be transported immediately into his world. His diary is not so much a record of events as a recreation of them. Not all the passages are as picturesque as the famous set pieces in which he describes Charles II's coronation or the Great Fire of London, but there is not an entry which does not in some degree display the same power of summoning back to life the events it relates… Throughout the diary Pepys writes mainly as an observer of people. It is this that makes him the most human and accessible of diarists, and that gives the Diary its special quality as a historical record" (Latham, The Illustrated Pepys, 7). "The best book of its kind in the English language… Pepys is marvelously entertaining: the times and the man peep out in a thousand odd circumstances and amusing expressions… The ablest picture of the age in which the writer lived, and a work of standard importance in English Literature" (Allibone, 1557)." - Bauman's. Covers mildly worn along edges, some foxing on endpapers, else near fine; unmarked, tight, square, and clean. VERY GOOD.. Everyman's Library Series. 12mo 7" - 7½" tall. viii, (i), 666; viii, 719, (1) pp .