Samuel Pepys - Publication History of The Diary

Publication History of The Diary

The Reverend John Smith was engaged to transcribe the diaries into plain English; and he laboured at this task for three years, from 1819 to 1822, unaware that a key to the shorthand system was stored in Pepys's library a few shelves above the diary volumes. Smith's transcription—which is also kept in the Pepys Library – was the basis for the first published edition of the diary, edited by Lord Braybrooke, released in two volumes in 1825.

A second transcription, done with the benefit of the key, but often less accurately, was completed in 1875 by Mynors Bright, and published in 1875–1879. This added about a third to the previously published text, but still left only about four-fifths of the diary in print. Henry B. Wheatley, drawing on both his predecessors, produced a new edition in 1893–1899, revised in 1926, with extensive notes and an index.

All of these editions omitted passages (chiefly about Pepys's sexual adventures) which the editors thought too obscene ever to be printed.

The complete and definitive edition, edited and transcribed by Robert Latham and William Matthews, was published by Bell & Hyman, London, and the University of California Press, Berkeley, in nine volumes, along with separate Companion and Index volumes, over the years 1970–1983. Various single-volume abridgements of this text are also available.

The Introduction in volume I provides a scholarly but readable account of "The Diarist", "The Diary" ("The Manuscript", "The Shorthand", and "The Text"), "History of Previous Editions", "The Diary as Literature", and "The Diary as History". The Companion provides a long series of detailed essays about Pepys and his world.