Why didn't Samuel Pepys destroy his incriminating diary? Writer knew his words would end up in print, says expert

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Dr Kate Loveman, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester's School of English, says Samuel Pepys suspected his famous diary would be printed - and took steps to protect his reputation

“The measures Pepys took via his will to control access to his diary are suggestive of how he thought the diary might be used in the future. Pepys had a detailed codicil in his will about what he wanted his nephew, John Jackson, to do with his library, which included many of his papers, and his 1660s diary.

The codicil’s explicit emphasis is on keeping the books together and preserving them, but the effect was also to preserve Pepys’s reputation. Pepys wanted Jackson to give the library to Magdalene College in Cambridge, where both he and Jackson had studied. It was to be put in a ‘faire Roome’, preferably in ‘the New Building’, and to go by the name of ‘Bibliotheca Pepysiana’.

The library was to be under the ‘sole power and custody’ of the Master of the College, and the master was not to allow anyone to remove books any further from the library than to the master’s lodge, and then only 10 at a time.

The rule on not removing books is usually understood to be a way of preventing books being lost from the collection – and in that it’s been very successful. It has lost only a few over almost 300 years.

However, it also meant that any one reading Pepys’s manuscripts would have to read them in his library, in surroundings which emphasise Pepys’s learning, wealth, and benevolence. They would be surrounded by Pepys’s fine book collection, in a building which he had helped pay for.

The conditions also mean that the first readers of the diary would likely be male Cambridge scholars or historians – people who had at least some interests in common with Pepys.

Pepys was prepared to throw the dice and risk leaving his diary to posterity but, I argue, he weighted those dice – using the conditions of his will to try to ensure a sympathetic readership.

There are also reasons to think that by the end of his life Pepys anticipated that part of his diary might sometime end up in print. When he asked for the library to be left to the custody of the master of Magdalene, this was putting any publication of his papers under the control of the holder of that office – and the master of Magdalene, whoever he might be down the years, was unlikely to want to unduly damage the reputation of a respected alumnus and benefactor.

I’m arguing that Pepys, who always careful about his reputation, set conditions in his will which were, in part, about trying to ensure a sympathetic future readership for his papers, including his diary.

If so, he has been very successful – the college has followed the terms of his will in carefully preserving his library, and the eventual printing of his diary was managed with some care for contemporary readers’ sensibilities and for Pepys’s reputation.

In the 19th century, when the diary was first published, the editor removed what he felt was unsuitable material for his readership. More recently - since the 1960s - it was possible to print the diary in an expurgated edition, which is a widely respected work of scholarship.

I’m not arguing that Pepys intended or anticipated all of these consequences, but he did help set the conditions for his reputation today through strategic planning over the fate of his library.”

• Dr Kate Loveman will give a talk, Why Did Pepys Keep a Diary, at the National Maritime Museum tomorrow (November 26) from 11am-1pm. Tickets £8, book online. Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution is at the museum until March 28 2016.

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All Hallows by the Tower
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The Monument
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St Paul's Cathedral
The current Cathedral – the fourth to occupy this site – was designed by the court architect Sir Christopher Wren and built between 1675 and 1710 after its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. Its architectural and artistic importance reflect the determination of the five monarchs who oversaw its building that London’s leading church should be as beautiful and imposing as their private palaces.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/art542010-samuel-pepys-diary-kate-loveman-greenwich