Pepys reading: passion for books in an English man’s diary of the 17th century

Abstract

The article touches upon the Early Modern practices of reading, which are subject of much debate in contemporary scholarship. The traditional image of man’s reading before the 18th century implied serious approach to books and the use of information found there for self-education, self-edification, and acquisition of social prestige. The analysis of the diary by Samuel Papys (1660-1669), a Navy Office clerk, demonstrates that this ideal model did not have considerable effect on representations of the experience of reading in texts that constructed a “story of self”. Not only the practices of reading varied greatly, but the category chosen by Pepys to define this experience was the category of pleasure directly linked to the “self-image” under construction.