Reading and News-gathering in Samuel Pepys's Circle

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Samuel Pepys's diary of 1660s has played a central role in popularising knowledge of the Restoration period and continues to be a source of new insights for historians and literary scholars. During the seventeenth century, news-gathering, reading and gossiping were closely interrelated activities. Pepys was an expert sifter of news, a devoted bibliophile, and inveterate gossip, and as such his papers provide an extraordinarily rich resource for study of reading practices and the transmission of texts in the decades following the Restoration. To better understand the history of reading, publishing and book collecting in the period 1660-1700, we need to take advantage of the kind of detailed, contextual information that Pepys provides. Studying Pepys's reading behaviour encourages, indeed necessitates, an interdisciplinary approach, for Pepys did not confine himself to the novels and plays that are of interest to literary critics or to the newsbooks and satire primarily of interest to political historian: he read widely in variety of works, including scientific treatises, descriptions of the latest technologies, sermons, conduct books and ballads. My research project goes beyond Pepys's famous diary to consider the evidence of his library which survives at Magdalene College, Cambridge, his copious correspondence, and his unpublished and little known papers (from shopping lists to account books) now in the Bodleian Library. Other evidence comes from the papers of Pepys's many associates and from the documents of contemporaries such as the clergyman Giles More. Using these records, I examine how works from a range of major genres were used by Pepys and his contemporaries in the period 1660-1700: What factors commonly prompted the reading and acquisition of works? What were the priorities in interpreting particular types of text? What functions did the ownership and display of books serve for Pepys, his friends and colleagues? Samuel Pepys was in some ways an extraordinary reader, but his curiosity and his concern for documenting information mean that his papers tell us much about reading and news-gathering in a cross-section of Restoration society: the reading activity of nobles, merchants, gentlewomen and servants left their traces in the records created by or associated with Pepys. Indeed, as Pepys's career and his bibliophilia progressed, he built up international networks of contacts who exchanged news, gossip, books and ideas around Europe. Crucially, the papers of Pepys and his contacts offer details which allow us not only to track how social relationships influenced reading habits, but also to trace the relationships between oral, scribal and printed media. Samuel Pepys thus stands at the centre of this study, which aims to increase our understanding of the receipt and exchange of information at a time of momentous events in politics and also in the booktrade. For those with interests in the history of the book, Restoration political history, early modern intellectual history and the development of genres this will prove an intriguing and accessible work.