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Article: Samuel Pepys: A Life. .(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Albion
- Article date:
- December 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 North American Conference on British Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Stephen Coote. SAMUEL PEPYS: A LIFE. New York: Palgrave. 2001. Pp. xiii, 386. $27.95. ISBN 0-321-23929-7.
Stephen Coote has produced the kind of popular history that is often purchased and seldom read. No doubt, copies will soon appear in second hand bookshops alongside Arthur Bryant's trilogy, Samuel Pepys (1933-39). Like his predecessor, Coote has produced a predictable biography, which relies heavily on the famous Diary as a source of evidence rather than as a literary document.
Pepys, one of the most famous Englishmen of the Restoration, comes across as flat and humorless despite the author's attempts to invest him with a certain roguish English ...