The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a New and Complete Transcription By Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 Volume Set ) with Material laid in from the Editor William Matthews by Pepys, Sameul

Berkeley; (1970,71, 72, 74, 76 and 83(: University of California Press. Octavo. Complete in 11 volumes with extensive footnotes to historical references, and bibliography. Volume 11 is a complete index of the entire set. Laid in William Matthews travel letter to his friends and hope that the Pepys volume has since arrived, although the set was not yet complete, just two more volumes. In a separate letter on a University of California order form he notes that more is in print of the diary of S.P. published by the U of California with much on getting publication completed and desiring "I am anxious to complete the set in the same style...for the remaining values." This is why complete sets such as this one exist but many are made up of various printings. Pepys' diary includes his accounts of the great plague, the great fire of London, his role as Secretary of the Royal Navy and his multiple sexual conquests. His diary was written in a shorthand and remained unread in the Cambridge University Library until someone browsed his library and noticed an obscure book on shorthand. Suddenly, what had lain dormant for a century and a half could not be read and the complete first edition was published in 1825. This is the definitive edition begun by Robert Latham with an important 100 plus page introduction about Pepys, his diary, and its importance as literature and history. There is also a section on the methods of the commentary, a reader's guide, a select list of persons, and a select glossary. Published from 1970-1983 complete sets are not common. Although his affair with the teenage Deb Willet is discovered by his wife just as he says he has his hand in her "cunny", the English word cunt or its Latin equivalent (cunnus) is not in the index. It was not, of course, until the liberalization of the 1959 Obscene Publications Act that is was possible to include the full text.