Samuel Pepys was a 26 year old civil servant in London when he began his diary on January 1, 1660. He kept his diary which ran to several volumes until May 31, 1669. Pepys never meant his diary to be published because it would have landed him in big trouble with the court of Charles II and so he wrote his journals in encrypted form.

I found out about Samuel Pepys’ diary yesterday while I was reading Julie and Julia (2005) by Julie Powell. Julie started a blog in 2002 on Salon.com and in her follow up book Julie and Julia she briefly writes about Samuel Pepys as the first blogger:

“On January 1, 1660, a young government worker in London started a diary. For the next nine years this guy wrote every single day. He witnessed the Great Fire of London and some disappointingly overdone roasts. He went to hundreds of plays, vowed to quit drinking then changed his mind. He ate a lot—no matter the precarious state of the union, a barrel of oysters was always appreciated—and worked a lot, and fondled whatever girls would deign to allow it. And he wrote about all of it—honestly, self-indulgently” – Julie Powell, Julie and Julia

I wanted to find a copy of Samuel Pepys’ journals and its easy to do. Just go to pepysdiary.com (a site run by Phil Gyford) and there it is, the complete diary 1660 to 1669 laid out in a readable format. Here is yesterday’s portion of Pepys’ diary:

Thursday 4 June 1663

“Up betimes, and my wife and Ashwell and I whiled away the morning up and down while they got themselves ready, and I did so watch to see my wife put on drawers, which poor soul she did, and yet I could not get off my suspicions, she having a mind to go into Fenchurch Street before she went out for good and all with me, which I must needs construe to be to meet Pembleton, when she afterwards told me it was to buy a fan that she had not a mind that I should know of, and I believe it is so … and yet all this cannot make my mind quiet. … So I to dinner alone, and so to my chamber, and then to the office alone, my head aching and my mind in trouble for my wife, being jealous of her spending the day, though God knows I have no great reason. Yet my mind is troubled” – Samuel Pepys

But in addition to the daily diary entrys the real fun is the comments section with readers weighing in on Samuel Pepys’ marital woes, health concerns, career advancement worries etc. 21st century readers following the life of an obscure British civil servant who lived almost 400 years ago.

The diaries of Samuel Pepys were finally decoded between 1819 –1822 thanks to John Smith, an undergraduate at Cambridge, who put in three years of painstaking work deciphering what Pepys had written.