Description

Pepys narrates his memoirs in an honest reporting style noted by critics as unlike any other diary in history. Pepys never intended his memoirs for publication, and as a result recorded both common and historic daily events with a reporter's style of description. For example, on October 13, 1660, Pepys describes the historic event of the execution of oneof Charles I's enemies as follows: "I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered." In the same entry, Pepys relates the events of his comparatively ordinary afternoon, "setting up shelves in my study."

Pepys's description gets more detailed when he is suitably inspired. One of the most famous examples from the narrative is Pepys's description of the Great Fire of London in 1666, in which he offers his assistance. Says Pepys in an unusually descriptive diary entry on September 2, 1666: "The houses, too, so very thick thereabouts, and...