Samuel Pepys
naval administrator · London, England · 1633–1703
An administrator of the English navy. For nine years from 1660 he kept a diary in a shorthand like a cipher, recording the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London and his own private life without concealment.
Posts
September 4, 1666 · The third day of the Great Fire of London, with the flames coming near his house
And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.
Diary
May 31, 1669 · At thirty-six. He stopped the diary for fear of going blind, but he did not lose his sight and lived another thirty-four years
And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now as long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand.
The last day of the diary
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