For a guy few outside of the British Navy know much about, Samuel Pepys is getting a lot of play these days. He is the subject of a new biography by Claire Tomalin, reviewed last week in the NY Times, and his daily diaries have been turned into a blog by Phil Gyford, who writes about the project in an article for BBC News:

For nearly 10 years from 1660 Pepys wrote about his experiences day by day: his own intriguing private life, his professional rise through the ranks and important events of the day such as The Great Fire and the Plague.

This journal of both large and small scale events often happens in public view today, on weblogs. Known as blogs, a few years ago these sites were the sole domain of web geeks but now an ever-increasing number cover thousands of topics.

I thought Pepys' diary could make a great weblog. The published diary takes the form of nine hefty volumes - a daunting prospect. Reading it day by day on a website would be far more manageable, with the real-time aspect making it a more involving experience.

....Some readers have wondered if the site says anything about the state of blogging. Are conventional weblogs unexciting and we're craving novelty? I disagree - weblogging has never been healthier or more vibrant; the more people involved, the better the net is. Now the format is established and familiar, it's far easier to create innovative ways of using it.

Others have marvelled at my apparent level of commitment; I have 10 years of weblogging ahead of me. But with the site built, preparing new diary entries should take little more than an evening or two each month.

But I'm sure I'll spend more time reading the diary and readers' annotations and contributing my own - this is what excites me the most. Not only will I finally read the diary, I'll do so at the same time as people all over the world. It's like the world's largest book club.

Then my wife and I, it being a great frost, went to Mrs. Jem's, in expectation to eat a sack-posset, but Mr. Edward not coming it was put off; and so I left my wife playing at cards with her, and went myself with my lanthorn to Mr. Fage, to consult concerning my nose, who told me it was nothing but cold, and after that we did discourse concerning public business; and he told me it is true the City had not time enough to do much, but they are resolved to shake off the soldiers; and that unless there be a free Parliament chosen, he did believe there are half the Common Council will not levy any money by order of this Parliament.

The Times review on Pepys:

Pepys had two great accomplishments. He was the creator, in effect, of the modern British Navy, and to this day naval historians so revere him that they regard the other Pepys, the literary one, as an embarrassment and a distraction. He was also a compulsive diarist. Starting on New Year's Day in 1660 (when he was 26), he faithfully wrote down, in a shorthand code, a day-by-day account of everything he saw, felt or heard for the next nine years. The completed diary fills six 282-page notebooks; it's the longest, most personal account we have of life in the 17th century, and also an invaluable eyewitness account of some of the most seismic events in English history: the Restoration (Pepys was in the boat that went to fetch Charles II from the Netherlands), the plague of 1665, the Great Fire the following year and the Dutch raids the year after that. Bracketing the diary are the years of the Civil War and the Protectorate (Pepys as a schoolboy watched the king's execution) and, later, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, during which Pepys, who remained a staunch Jacobite, was briefly imprisoned on suspicion of treason. Few literary figures have lived through more interesting, or more treacherous, times.
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