SAMUEL PEPYS : The Man in the Making by Bryant, Arthur

London 1979, Collins, later printing, hard bound in dust jacket, 6x9, VG/VG condition ( dj spine lightly faded, ), 4 illus, 2 maps, notes, index. Some years ago Arthur Bryant set out to reconstruct the life and times of Samuel Pepys from the vast collection of documents which this remarkable man left behind. He took over the papers of the two Pepysian scholars who had previously attempted this unfinished task, went through the whole of the unpublished Pepys manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and used a number of previously unprinted passages from the diary. The result is a work of which Sir Harold Nicolson wrote that it `will live as among the best of English biographies'.In this first volume Sir Arthur Bryant tells the story of Pepys' early work and the stranger one of his married life. Covering the years 1633-1669, it records the Restoration of Charles II, the great plague and the fire of London, an economic crisis and a European war. Though a work of meticulous scholarship it is as thrilling as any novel.This book, though complete in itself, opens what is likely to remain the definitive biography of the Englishman who wrote the world's greatest diary, established rules that still govern the British Admiralty and was the father of our Civil Service.