Samuel Pepys was born in London on February 23, 1633, and died there on May 26, 1703. Despite coming from humble stock as the son of a tailor, Pepys rose to become a highly influential public figure in 17th-century England. He attended St. Paul’s School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he obtained B.A. and M.A. degrees but was also reprimanded for drunken behavior. Pepys began his professional life working as a servant to Admiral Edward Montagu, who was his cousin and plays a key role in the Diary as Pepys’s patron and “lord.”

In 1655 Pepys married Elizabeth de St. Michel, the 15-year-old daughter of a French Huguenot refugee. Pepys’s early married life and his rise in the English government are chronicled in the Diary. From a servant, he progressed to being a clerk in the Navy office, then Treasurer of the Navy. When starting his various jobs Pepys typically lacked knowledge of anything pertaining to them (as he himself admits in the Diary), yet through persistence and application he quickly became master of his various duties.

The Diary ends before the most notable period of Pepys’s public service. In 1673, after Elizabeth had died of an illness at the age of 29, Pepys was appointed Head of the Admiralty; for the next several years he concentrated on stamping out corruption in the Navy and strengthening English sea power.