Description

Eleven Volume set limited to 1000 copies. Printed on Caxton wove paper by Cambridge University Press and quarter-bound in Nigerian goatskin; the paper covering the boards was hand-marbled by Ann Muir. Gilt page edgess, ribbon page markers, and color frontispieces.The first 9 volumes comprise the diary from 1660-1669, with an introduction in volume 1. Volume 10 is a companion volume and volume 11 is an index. This set includes the oak bookcase the Folio Society offered. This is a reproduction of the first complete transcription of the Diary , edited by Robert Latham and William Mathews and published by Bell & Hyman Ltd. Since the original was written in shorthand and incorporated Spanish, Italian and French words, translating may be a more accurate description than transcribing. All previous editions of the Diary claiming completeness were actually expurgated to omit sections the editors (first Mynors Bright, and later, H.B. Wheatley) thought too obscene, primarily Pepys’ frank accounts of his dalliances with various maidservants and friends of his wife. Wheatley, in the preface to his edition [reproduced by the Limited Editions Club] , noted, "a few passages which cannot possibly be printed. It may be thought by some that these omissions are due to an unnecessary squeamishness, but it is not really so, and readers are therefore asked to have faith in the judgement of the editor." Wheatley claims to have indicated all such omissions with an ellipsis, but comparison with the modern text indicates that he did not always do this, and that he silently bowdlerised a number of words. -Wikipedia Such titillating passages aside, the Diary remains fascinating for the unequalled portrait of Restoration England by an intelligent and candid observer in the upper rank of society. It provides stirring eyewitness accounts of some of the most momentous events of the period: the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. In addition, it provides charming, and sometimes shocking, details of the day-to-day life of an upper-class Englishman in the heady days following the Restoration of the monarchy. There is an amazing amount of research present in the footnotes, the identification of persons mentioned at the end of each volume, the Companion volume which gives details on Restoration life and events, and the Index.