Samuel Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys (1601–1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys ("née" Kite; died 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of
John Evelyn's Diary John Evelyn's Diary The Diary of John Evelyn, a gentlemanly Royalist and "virtuoso" of the seventeenth century, was first published in 1818 (2nd edition, 1819) under the title "Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn", in an edition by William Bray. Bray was assisted by William Upcott, who had access to the Evelyn family archives. The diary of Evelyn's contemporary Samuel Pepys was first published in 1825, and became more celebrated; but the publication of Evelyn's work in part prompted the attention given to Pepys's. Evelyn's diary has entries running from 1640, when the author was a