Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, F.R.S. Secretary to the Admiralty in the Reigns of Charles II. and James II. [Fore-edge Painting].

PEPYS, Samuel. With a Life and Notes by Richard Lord Braybrooke.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 138281

London: Published for Henry Colburn, 1854.

Finely bound fourth edition of the diary and correspondence of Samuel Pepys. Octavo, four volumes bound in red Russia with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, each volume decorated with a concealed fore-edge painting including a portrait of Pepys, the Great Plague, the Fire of London, and the Battle of Solebay, illustrated, folding map. In very good condition.

"Alexander conquered the world; but Pepys, with a keener, more selfish understanding of life, conquered a world for every sense" (Charles Whibley). "Pepys led a full, varied and voraciously-enjoyed life and clearly took pleasure in setting it all down in plain words. Unlike most frantically busy men, he had remarkable powers of observation" (Paul Johnson). "The bald truth about oneself, what we are all too timid to admit when we are not too dull to see it, that was what Pepys saw clearly and set down unsparingly" (Robert Louis Stevenson).