Second (first octavo) edition. Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) was educated at Huntingdon grammar school, St Paul’s School, London, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, to which his library was bequeathed (with the stipulation that it would remain with his heir, John Jackson, until the latter’s death). After Jackson’s death in 1724, the library of 3,000 printed books and manuscripts, together with their accompanying presses commissioned by Pepys, were transported to Magdalene College, where they remain. In the library were six manuscript volumes titled ‘Journal’, which contained Pepys’s diary from 1659 to 1669 (when his failing eyesight forced him to end it), written in an apparently undecipherable shorthand. The diary remained unread at Magdalene for nearly a century before an undergraduate of St John’s College, Cambridge was commissioned to decipher the manuscript, leading to the first publication of the diary. This edition was issued in 1825 by Colburn in two quarto volumes at £6 6s. (a small number of large-paper sets were also printed). ¶¶

The first edition was well-received by critics, including Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, who wrote in his notice for The Edinburgh Review that ‘[t]here is trash enough no doubt in his journal, – trifling facts, and silly observations in abundance. But we can scarcely say that we wish it a page shorter; and are of opinion, that there is very little of it which does not help us to understand the character of his times, and his contemporaries, better than we should ever have done without it; and make us feel more assured that we comprehend the great historical events of the age, and the people who bore a part in them. Independent of instruction altogether too, there is no denying, that it is very entertaining thus to be transported into the very heart of a time so long gone by; and to be admitted into the domestic intimacy, as well as the public councils, of a man of great activity and circulation in the reign of Charles II. Reading this book, in short, seems to us to be quite as good as living with Mr. Samuel Pepys in his proper person, – and though the court scandal may be detailed with more grace and vivacity in the Mémoires de Grammont, we have no doubt that even this part of his multifarious subject is treated with far greater fidelity and fairness in the work before us – while it gives us more clear and undistorted glimpses into the true English life of the times – for the court was substantially foreign – than all the other memorials of them put together, that have come down to our own’ (F. Jeffrey, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review (London, 1846), vol. I, p. 511). ¶¶

Sir Walter Scott was similarly positive in his notice for The Quarterly Review and contrasted Pepys’s correspondence with the journal entries, commenting that ‘[t]he reader may be amused with comparing the style of Pepys and his sentiments as brushed and dressed, and sent out to meet company, with his more genuine and far more natural effusions of a night-gown and slipper description [in the Diary]’ (W. Scott, The Miscellaneous Prose Works ... Vol. XX. Periodical Criticism. Vol. IV. Miscellaneous (Edinburgh and London, 1848), p. 151). Following the first edition of 1825, which was issued in an expensive quarto format, this second edition of 1828 was the first to be published in octavo format and was accordingly priced at £3 10s. The encouraging reception of these first two editions led to further work on the Diary, and Colburn issued significantly enlarged and revised editions in 1848-1849 (third edition) and 1853 (fourth edition), which initiated a series of revisions which continued into the twentieth century and culminated in Latham and Matthews’s definitive edition of 1970-1982. ¶¶

Lowndes p. 1828. ¶¶¶