Pepys in Print, 1660–1703

This article discusses the printed works produced by Samuel Pepys during his lifetime, along with significant references to him in print by his contemporaries. Pepys’s own print contributions ranged from news reports on Charles II’s Restoration to self-vindicating naval Memoires (1690). Having been the subject of a libel during the Popish Plot in 1679, Pepys was himself criticized for authoring libels as a result of his pamphlet campaign to reform Christ’s Hospital (1698–1699). Pepys’s strategic uses of publication media mean that following his career is a way to investigate the boundaries between print and manuscript publication in the late seventeenth century and examine the association of these media with concepts of private and public. Pepys’s uses of print also provide an important context for interpreting his intentions concerning the preservation and circulation of his diary of the 1660s, which was to remain unprinted until the nineteenth century.