Rating: 
Summary: Presents Great Character with Great Clarity
Review: 2003 -- the 300th anniversary of Pepys death -- accidentally turned into the year of Pepys for me after I bought the audiobook version of his diaries read by Kenneth Branagh. I fell in love with the diaries (read so well by Branagh), but was frustrated by my lack of knowledge about Restoration London. So, I did some reading in other history books, but eventually found this book. Tomalin has written a very clear biography that manages to give enough of the historical context without slowing down the personal narrative. Better educated, I listened to the audiobook diary again and enjoyed them even more than the first-time around! I highly recommend both the audiobook and this biography to anyone interested in becoming acquainted with a man who is fascinating and charming and frequently amoral, but remarkably honest! 1660 London doesn't seem so long ago or so foreign to me anymore!
Rating:
Summary: Presents Great Character with Great Clarity
Review: 2003 -- the 300th anniversary of Pepys death -- accidentally turned into the year of Pepys for me after I bought the audiobook version of his diaries read by Kenneth Branagh. I fell in love with the diaries (read so well by Branagh), but was frustrated by my lack of knowledge about Restoration London. So, I did some reading in other history books, but eventually found this book. Tomalin has written a very clear biography that manages to give enough of the historical context without slowing down the personal narrative. Better educated, I listened to the audiobook diary again and enjoyed them even more than the first-time around! I highly recommend both the audiobook and this biography to anyone interested in becoming acquainted with a man who is fascinating and charming and frequently amoral, but remarkably honest! 1660 London doesn't seem so long ago or so foreign to me anymore!
Rating:
Summary: Glorious Gossip!
Review: As a lover of well written biography and history, it's wonderful to indulge in a such a well-informed, witty and charming picture of one man's life in the London of Cromwell and the Restoration. I think Pepys would have loved the internet, chat rooms, gossip columns in the Sunday papers and probably reality TV. Tomalin has introduced me to a man who had inexhaustible curiosity about the world around him but, most significantly of all, curiosity about himself. Everything and anything was worth noting down for Pepys and the minutiae of his daily life is a treasure. I've never read the diary itself but after reading this, I don't see the need. The author has captured exquisitely Pepys's life and times including plague, fire, war, peace, domesticity, ill health and extended family - all coloured by Pepys's endearing self-examination (and self-importance!!). Fortunately, Pepys loved himself and I found myself liking him as he liked himself. As such, we get a wonderful picture of a man's life and times without politically correct, turgid self-examination and self-criticism; this man loved life! Hooray for him! For a micro and macro view of the London of Cromwell, the Restoration, the coming of age of the British Navy, the evolution of literature, art, science, architecture and the embryo of the British empire, you can't beat this book. Highly recommended - Tomalin gives a fresh, clear view of a man who seems so immediate you can well imagine him living next door!
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Paean to a Talented Diarist and Administrator
Review: Claire Tomalin is quite taken with Samuel Pepys, warts and all, comparing his Diary to the works of Milton, Bunyan, Chaucer, Dickens and Proust. She often calls him Sam in her biography, "Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self." Less formidable than H.W. Brands, "The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin," her biography is every bit its equal in verve and the sheer fun I had in its reading. It is more of a true biography than, say, Grazia's analysis of Machiavelli's political and social theories in, "Machiavelli in Hell" with details of his life included more for context than storytelling. Many, including myself, are probably already familiar with Pepys in the context of his Diary. Indeed, I was first introduced to him in high school where I was required to read his accounts of the plague and the great fire in London. Robert Loius Stevenson compared the "fullness and...intimacy of detail..." found in Pepys' diary with another great self-examiner of a half-century before, Michel de Montaigne. Though Tomalin points out that the two were different in their approaches, and indeed Pepys probably was not even aware of Montaigne's work, she acknowledges that the writings of both contain a uniqueness not found in contemporary literature. Her fascination with Pepys does lead Tomalin to forgive some of his more odious faults, painting them in soft-edges. But, in her defense she is also quick to point out his hypocrisy and does not shy away from the telling of his most shameful deeds. I think Barzun got it right in his book, "From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 To The Present": "It is a waste of breath to point out that every observer is in some way biased. It does not follow that bias cannot be guarded against, that all biases distort equally, or that controlled bias remains as bad as propaganda." I think Tomalin's bias is not one of omission but rather one of feeling, rather like a mother's bias toward her recalcitrant son. She goes well beyond the Diary in digging into a past that encompasses no mean achievements for a tailor's son. She tells the story of this extraordinary life against the backdrop of an England suffering from civil and international wars and plagues without ever letting Pepys leave center stage. The man who had been the simple diarist I was introduced to in high-school, Tomalin transforms into a critical, and at times caustic, man of great administrative and oratorical talents. But for all of that he might have slipped into obscurity had it not been for the system of patronage that many great men of the past owe their lasting memory to. Her narrative loses some of its stride during the years after the Diary closes. It is unfortunately a period lacking in the personal reflections of the man himself since he chose not return to the Diary and we only know him through letters, official papers, and a couple short spates at new journals. Nevertheless, this biography is a worthy tribute to Samuel Pepys and one well worth the reading.
Rating:
Summary: As good as they come
Review: Even for those of us who have read other work by Ms Tomalin, such as her great biography of Jane Austen, the quality of this book is astounding. Pepys couldn't have asked for a better biographer. Against the magnificent backdrop of Commonwealth and Restoration England, she paints a convincing and believable portrait of her subject, warts and all. He was tremendously ambitious and not above betraying his friends and benefactors. He systematically neglected and cheated on his wife, and sexually harassed his female servants and other women not in a position to resist his advances. He was mean and unkind to his sister. And yet he was an intelligent, hardworking and capable man, and one of the first to embody the concept of meritocracy, as opposed to making a career out of one's birth and fortune. Part of the author's merit lies in showing that the fascinating world in which her man lived has more similarities to ours than we might at first imagine. Tomalin's biography, covering not only the diary years but also Pepys' subsequent career, is an absolute must for all interested in the seventeenth century and this charming, flawed diarist.
Rating: 
Summary: A very enjoyable read
Review: I read Pepys' Diary about 25 years ago - but this is almost better than the Diary. The Diary only ran from 1660 to 1669, but Pepys lived an eventful life for another 30 years, and this book is very good at putting his whole life, during and after the Diary, into historical context. Very enjoyable reading whether on the beach, travelling or for bedtime.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended, with a small caveat
Review: I was fully absorbed in this book from beginning to end. Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys is very well researched and laid out, and very well-written, with plenty of background and post-diary information on the many personalities in Pepys' diary. She has a tendency, however, to impose modern values on 17th century behavior; for example, describing Pepys's behavior with "little Mrs. Tooker" as "sexual abuse", speculating that the girl was pre-adolescent, apparently only because Pepys referred to her as a "child", even while admitting that her age at the time is unknown. I doubt even the philandering Pepys, with many of his Puritan sensibilities still intact, would have involved himself with a pre-pubescent girl. There were standards, although they were different from today's standards; a girl was considered legally marriageable at age 12, and his own wife was just shy of her 15th birthday on their wedding day. Tomalin does point this out, so I don't know why she felt it necessary to call it "sexual abuse" and mention that Pepys would be in jail if he did the same thing today. The different standards are so obvious that I don't feel like those comments were necessary.
To be fair, Tomalin doesn't do as much judging the past by today's standards as many other historians do, and when she does do it, it's not very hard to read "around" her comments and get to the facts, especially since I had already read the diary for myself. I would recommend this book to any fan of Pepys, or of the Restoration period, or of naval history. I would also recommend those who like this book, who haven't read the diary, to read the diary, in as unabridged a version as you can lay your hands on.
Rating:
Summary: The unequalled biography
Review: Pepys is lucky to have Claire Tomalin as his biographer. She is objective but sympathetic, thoughtful, analytic, and writes with an easy, fluid style. At times she lets Pepys speak for himself, through excerpts from his diary and letters, while at other times she recounts events in a seamless narrative fashion that, from reading the diary alone, would be more opaque and even somewhat choppy. In other words, she fills in the gaps, explaining who's who and providing background information about selected people and events that Pepys naturally felt no need to describe.
Pepys led a colorful life, which Tomalin does her best to illuminate. The core of her book is, of course, the years 1660-1669, during which he wrote his famously candid diary. Given that he also left behind volumes of letters in the more than 30 years more that he lived, it's a bit surprising that she doesn't present more information from those letters. Without the rich detail of the diary, the second half of his life is presented in a more perfunctory manner, including his three arrests and one brief imprisonment in the Tower. Her quotes from the diary are more sparse than they might have been, too. I assume she was willing to let the diary speak for itself -- and the interested reader who has not read the diary would be well advised to do so, because its rewards are only hinted at in this biography.
Tomalin made another assumption in writing her book, namely, that the reader would have at least a passing familiarity with English history, particularly the Restoration era. Many events are not fully explained, such as the reasons for the war with the Dutch, or indeed how warfare was declared, conducted, and concluded in the 17th century, which might have been helpful. And she is unable to elucidate exactly what Pepys did at the office all day and often into the night, although his contributions to improving the Navy are adequately sketched. It's curious that, once she has covered the Great Fire of 1666, she doesn't make a single reference to the rebuilding of London (aside from one very slight allusion), although reconstruction surely was a significant part of the background of everyday life for the ten years it took the city to restore itself. The diary contains a number of references. (For a full account of the disaster and recovery, see Adrian Tinniswood's By Permission of Heaven: The True Story of the Great Fire of London.)
Tomalin sticks closely to the man himself, his career and personal life. As every biographer has a right to do, she favors those aspects that most interest her: the arc of his rise from near-poverty to wealth and influence; the ups and downs of his marriage to a wife he loves but never bothers to name in the diary; his personal honesty and disclosure of his own flaws, particularly his willingness to take bribes and his wandering eye; his observations of the licentious court of Charles II; the continuing influence of a Puritan upbringing and education on his worldly career; his friendships and enmities; the things that brought him pleasure, such as books and music and chasing women, and the things that made him anxious, such as the possible exposure of his shadier dealings and the problems with his eyesight that eventually forced him to abandon the diary; and his unflagging zest for life and experience. For those who choose to read Richard Le Gallienne's admirable but bowdlerized abridgment of the diary, which is one-eighth the length of the original, Tomalin's biography fills in some gaps and also provides information about persons named in Le Gallienne's edition, which, frustratingly, contains no notes at all.
Even if you haven't read the diary, Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys stands alone as an intimate portrait of an intelligent, curious, flawed human being and the tumultuous times he lived in.
Rating:
Summary: A Complex Man for Complex Times
Review: Samuel Pepys was a man of some standing in his own times- part of what we would today call the establishment. He was a senior government official with responsibility for the Navy (the biggest spending government department in his day), a Member of Parliament, on speaking terms with two kings (Charles II and James II), President of the Royal Society and an Elder Brother of Trinity House. It is not, however, any of these achievements which have made him a household name, but rather his famous diary, which gives us such a vivid picture of both his life and his times. Had he not kept a diary, it is unlikely that his name would be known today except to historians of the seventeenth century navy and to those who are, like me, members of Magdalene College, Cambridge. (Pepys was a student at the college and its best-known benefactor; one of the college buildings is named after him). This presents a problem to any biographer of Pepys. Although he lived for seventy years, from 1633 to 1703, his diary covers only the nine years between 1660 and 1669. (He abandoned it because of fears about his eyesight). We therefore know a great deal about a period covering just under one seventh of his total lifespan, and much less about the remaining six sevenths. As might be expected, therefore, this book covers the 1660s in much greater detail than it does the rest of his life. Fortunately, that decade, the decade of the Restoration, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, was not only one of the most eventful in English history, but also the most important in Pepys's life, as it saw him rise from a minor clerk in government service to being a high official of the State. One of the main attractions of the diary, however, is that it deals with Pepys's private affairs (including matters that show him in a bad light), not merely with his official duties, and Ms Tomalin does not neglect this colourful side of his life. The portrait that emerges is one of a complex, contradictory figure. On the one hand, Pepys was a highly competent and hard working civil servant; on the other, he had little compunction about accepting bribes. Married to a beautiful young wife, to whom he professed devotion, he kept two long-term mistresses (Betty Martin and Mrs Bagwell) and was always ready to attempt the seduction of any other attractive woman who crossed his path. To some of his friends he showed great kindness; others he treated badly. In private, he could be disrespectful about his royal masters, yet in public he remained steadfastly loyal, even when it would have been in his interest to be otherwise. (Pepys's public career ended when he remained loyal to James II after the revolution of 1688 and refused to swear allegiance to the new King William III). When dealing with the years 1633-60 and 1669-1703, especially the earlier period, Ms Tomalin has less material to work with. Nevertheless, she succeeds in giving a good overall account of the course of Pepys's life, as well as an entertaining portrait of the times in which he lived. That period, for the modern reader, can be as contradictory as the man himself; at times the men and women of the seventeenth century seem surprisingly modern, at others they bear out the truth of the dictum about the past being another country where they do things differently. I was surprised, for example, by the description of Pepys's operation for a kidney stone; seventeenth century medical knowledge and surgical techniques were clearly more advanced than I had realised. The period was also one of greater social mobility than we are often led to believe; Pepys's father was not (as I had wrongly thought) part of the landed gentry but a poor London tailor. His first cousin Edward Montagu, however, was a wealthy and influential landowning magnate, made an earl by Charles II for the part he played in the Restoration. The religious and political struggles of the time, however, can often seem very alien from a modern viewpoint. Even when we understand them at an intellectual level, it can be difficult to have much sympathy with either side. The traditional Whig interpretation of history, of course, viewed the period as marking the birth of English constitutional liberty, but this seems today to be, at best, a half-truth. Certainly, Charles II and James II can appear at times as quasi-mediaeval despots, trying vainly to hold on to their arbitrary power in the face of a nascent democracy. At others, however, they seem more like enlightened philosopher kings, defending toleration and liberty of conscience against a parliament of bigots who valued no freedom more highly than the freedom to persecute others. (It may have been this aspect of their character that inspired Pepys's loyalty to the Stuart dynasty; he shared a certain religious scepticism with Charles, although not with James who was a devout Catholic). It is to Ms Tomalin's credit that she contents herself with giving the political background to Pepys's career and does not try to advance one historical interpretation at the expense of another (even though her subject was himself very much a Tory). This is, in fact, in many ways a fair, well-balanced book that I can recommend to anyone who is seeking an introduction to the colourful life of Samuel Pepys or who has an interest in seventeenth century history.
Rating:
Summary: Pepys Exposed
Review: Samuel Pepys, the world's greatest diarist, was a lower-middle-class kid whose intelligence was spotted early by a family patron, was given an education, found a job in the world's biggest city, and shot to the top of his field. Pepys became the British Navy's ablest and most articulate civil servant, this over the time when the Navy fought its three epic wars against Holland. But there have been many civil servants; what made Pepys famous was his diary: as Tomason notes, few if any writers in history have had the ability to lay themselves (and their surroundings) bare with such brutal directness. In his diaries we discover his tempestuous marriage, his many infatuations, his petty jealousies and his closeted republican views. (Republican would actually be too strong a word; suffice it to say he was born a puritan Cromwellian sympathizer, and, through sheer fortuity, became one of the pillars of the Stuart Restoration.) Tomason has dissected other great English writers before, notably Jane Austen, but she and Pepys seem to be particularly sympatico.
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