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Article: Samuel Pepys a Life.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- August 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Canadian Journal of History. 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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by Stephen Coote. New York, Palgrave, 2001. xiii, 386 pp. $38.95 Cdn (cloth).
It takes a bold writer to attempt a biography of one of the most recognized and cited of Restoration Englishmen. Yet, fresh from the study of his royal master, Stephen Coote ventures insight into both Samuel Pepys and his diary. If biography aims to recapture an individual's world view as well as to locate and explain its subject's place in a wider stream of change, Coote strikes a hopeful note when he observes that Pepys's "identity as a man was firmly rooted in the means by which he earned his money. I have tried to show the strands that made this up, to do justice to his Puritan ...