The Dark Side of Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys is popularly known as the founder of the modern navy, a member of the Royal Society and most of all, as a unique and frank diarist. Less well known is the fact that he was a serial sexual offender by modern standards; a voyeur, a groper and a rapist.

Set against the London society of Charles II’s restoration, and extensively using Pepys’ own words, this book concerns his numerous extramarital affairs, often using his professional status and position of influence to advance the careers of his subordinates, in return for the sexual favors of their wives.

With his own very frank descriptions, translated from the strange mix of languages and the seventeenth century shorthand he used to camouflage the content, the reader witnesses in often very graphic detail how Pepys set about achieving his lascivious objectives – on occasion resorting to physical force where persuasion or bribery failed. Whether she be wife, daughter, mother or humble maidservant, no woman was safe from his rapacious sexual appetite.

This book shows the reader a little known, dark and sometimes very disturbing aspect of Samuel Pepys’ character, one which even in his own day, he would not have wanted to be publicly aired.