an old colleague of mine, the excellent Phil Gyford, has hit on the
cool idea of putting up all of pepys as a blog, on a day-by-day
basis: starts tomorrow at www.pepysdiary.com. Thought it might be of
interest.
which is rather wonderful. The best thing about Pepys, I thought, when I read the diaries, some years ago, was watching him change, with the country, from the puritan days to the restoration -- watching him discover the theatre (to which he slowly becomes addicted), watching him grow and reinvent himself. The other best thing is that, confiding in a coded diary, he gradually becomes unutterably honest, and thus human, sometimes shockingly so.
I suspect that the talents that made him a remarkable secret diarist would have made him a lousy blogger, but luckily, none of the people he's writing about are going to be reading his blog.
Of course, someone could start writing Elizabeth Pepys's blog at the same time...