David WidgerSamuel Pepys (1633-1703) was an English naval administrator, Member of Parliament, and diarist whose private diary became one of the great documents of English literature and Restoration history. Written chiefly between 1660 and 1669, the diary recors public events and private life with remarkable detail, energy, and candour. Pepys wrote about the Restoration of Charles II, the plague year of 1665, the Great Fire of London in 1666, naval affairs, court politics, theatre, books, music, money, marriage, servants, food, illness, ambition, and the daily workings of London society. His gift was not only observation but immediacy: he made ordinary life historically vivid.David Widger was the editor and preparer of a wide range of Project Gutenberg texts, including selections and quotation indexes drawn from major literary and historical works. In Quotations from the Diary of Samuel Pepys, Widger arranged memorable passages from the Gutenberg edition of Pepys's diary, making the larger work easier to browse and sample. The selection preserves Pepys's importance as a writer of diaries, literary nonfiction, British history, London history, and seventeenth-century social observation. Read More Read Less