The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary - Professor Loveman's Inaugural Lecture
Wed 26 Jun 2024 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Bennett Building Lecture Theatre 1, LE1 7RH
Description
This talk explores how Samuel Pepys’s diary, kept secretly in the 1660s, became the most famous diary written in English. Includes the rude bits. Pepys’s 1660s diary – featuring sex, scandal, and one really Great Fire – was first published in 1825. Since then, Pepys has become a figurehead for the Restoration period and his diary hailed as a classic. This lecture looks at the very strange history of how that came about.
Kate Loveman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester. Her research focusses on the literature and history of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with interests in reading behaviour, crime, and information exchange. She works particularly on the collections of the diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). Kate is the author of Reading Fictions 1660-1740 (2008), Samuel Pepys and his Books (2015), and has edited Pepys’s diary for Everyman (2018).
Location
Bennett Building Lecture Theatre 1, LE1 7RH