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Everybody's Pepys
London: G. Bell and Sons, 1927. Item #04823
Everybody's Pepys
A Fine Inlaid Binding by Rivière & Son
Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard
RIVIÈRE & SON, binder. PEPYS, Samuel. SHEPARD, Ernest H., illustrator. Everybody's Pepys. The Diary of Samuel Pepys 1660-1669. Abridged from the Complete Copyright Text and Edited by O.F. Morshead. With 60 Illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1927.
Octavo (7 1/2 x 5 inches; 191 x 127 mm.). [xxiv], 570 pp. Fifty-seven full-page black and white plates and three text drawings.
Handsomely bound by Rivière & Son ca. 1927 (stamp-signed on front turn-in) in full medium blue morocco with a very ornate multi-fillet gilt frame enclosing a vari-colored morocco onlaid illustration with painted highlights, reproducing the black and white plate in the book "So To Bed" (facing p.400). Gilt ornamented raised bands. Gilt framed compartments with ornate gilt centerpieces. Gilt tooled edges and turn-ins, marbled paste-downs and end-leaves, publisher's pictorial end-papers bound in at end, all edges gilt. Minimal fading to spine, light and almost imperceptible mark on rear cover, otherwise fine.
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.
His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.
The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys).
Price: $2,850.00