Hazel Stuart, "Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90"

 

Hazel Stuart has lived in Leicestershire since 2004. She was born and brought up in Aberfoyle, Scotland, and attended university in London. She has previously published an academic paper on Poststructuralism, an award-winning children's fiction series and, most recently, a creative contribution in the University of Leicester's Other Lives in Samuel Pepys's Diary e-book. She has an ongoing interest in early modern history and the intersection of politics, religion and the occult. 

About Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90, transcribed and annotated by Hazel Stuart
Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90 is a transcription of the private journal belonging to a brilliant Scottish minister, scholar and translator abroad in London in the early days of the Glorious Revolution. Visiting the capital to oversee the printing of the first ever Gaelic Bible, a project financed by the Royal Society's Robert Boyle, he chronicles the late-seventeenth-century city in meticulous detail. Through Kirk's remarkably tolerant and curious narration, we explore a city of religious diversity, toy with early modern science's understanding of second sight, and get to tag along to some of seventeenth-century London's best visitor attractions. This book is every bit as critical to historians as the diaries of Pepys or Evelyn. Beyond her faithful transcription of the commonplace book, Hazel Stuart has provided an introduction and notes, including the most comprehensive biography to date of its author, Robert Kirk, a man whose interest in second sight and fairies was ultimately to lead him to infamy. 

You can read more about Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90, here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the book. 

From Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90

March 21, 1689, I also saw Gresham College, where the Hall pertaining to the Royal Society is, bestowed for the use of inquirers into nature’s phenomenon and mysteries by –

It is in Bishop’s Street on left-hand as you go forth to Bishop’s Gate. There is a square court there and a pole for mathematical experiments. But the Hall containing the curious rarities is not large but full of all varieties, above 2000.

Among which the main that I remarked and remembered were three manucodiatas with plain bills, long wings and tail, travelling feet: I took a feather out of a wing of one of them, and out of the tail of the ostridge’s skin. The bird of Paradise is carnivorous. I saw the pelican black, its bill was broad and as big as my arm, with a collar beneath. A Hudson’s Bay partridge white and long, with a few black feathers in the tail. A serpent of East India 7 yards in length, a small head and body as big as my leg at the ankles. A cassowary, duskish black fowl as big as an ostrich for the bones, though not so long necked, the bones of his leg are as gross as those of a man’s arm. The neck about a yard and a half in length, the legs three quarters. The blackish brown pigritia in shape like a man, a big body, slender legs, it goes but a yard and a half a day, though tis bigger than a cat. It climbs a tree, eats itself fat with fruit, and becomes lean before it creeps to the root of the tree.

Kate Loveman, "The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary"

Congratulations to Prof Kate Loveman, whose book The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary has just been published!

Kate Loveman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester. She researches the literature and history of the seventeenth century, notably things to do with Samuel Pepys (who rarely met a thing he did not want to have to do with). She is the author of Reading Fictions 1660-1740 (2008) and Samuel Pepys and his Books (2015), and has edited Pepys’s diary for Everyman (2018).

About The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary, by Kate Loveman
During the 1660s, Samuel Pepys kept a secret diary, full of intimate details and political scandal. First published two hundred years ago, it is now the most famous diary in the English language. The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary explores why Pepys’s diary was written, how this secret diary came to be published, and the many remarkable roles it has played in British culture since then. Pepys’s journal has prompted creative responses ranging from Victorian fanfiction to World War II propaganda and COVID parodies. For two centuries, it has also encouraged debates about what counts as ‘history’ and about whose stories are worth telling.

You can read more about The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the book. 

From The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary
Pepys’s journal vividly describes momentous events, such as the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London, alongside small moments – quarrels with his wife or jokes with servants. Since it was first published in 1825, it has variously been called an ‘incomparable masterpiece,’ ‘an historical and literary work of an outstanding character,’ ‘trifling,’ ‘tedious,’ ‘very amusing,’ ‘too gross to print,’ and ‘obscene.’ Those divided judgements come just from the people (the editors, the publishers, and the lawyers) who were tasked with getting this extremely bizarre, frequently filthy text into print. For most of the last two hundred years, significant sections of the diary were deemed unpublishable, thanks to Pepys’s habits of describing court scandals, his sex life, and his bowel movements. Since nothing could be more intriguing than a secret diary too shocking to print, this censorship only increased the public’s fascination. 

Other Lives in Samuel Pepys's Diary: A Collection of Creative Writing Inspired by Pepys's Journal of the 1660s

By Kate Loveman

Samuel Pepys’s diary of the 1660s is famous for detailing his hectic private life, alongside major events such as the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London. In the diary, there are also glimpses of female servants, enslaved Black people, and other Londoners whose lives barely appear in more conventional historical records. The diary is a tremendous source for historians and a great inspiration for creative writers.  

The Reimagining the Restoration project was set up to investigate the history and reception of the diary. In May 2022, the project funded online Creative Writing workshops for the public, led by Yvonne Battle-Felton (a historical novelist and Creative Writing tutor) and by me, Kate Loveman (the project’s lead researcher and a specialist on Pepys).  

Over the next few months, some of our writers developed their work for an online collection, Other Lives in Samuel Pepys’s Diary. They produced lively, witty and provocative pieces based on three figures mentioned in the diary: Jane Birch (a servant in the Pepys household); an unnamed Deaf boy whom Pepys encountered at a party; and Mingo, a young Black man who had been enslaved as a child and who lived next door to Pepys. The collection features an introduction to each figure (with diary excerpts), followed by the imaginative responses from our authors.

You can download the ebook here.

By way of example, below are excerpts from Pepys’s description of the Great Fire of London and a story from one of our authors, Sue Wright. Here Sue imagines Jane Birch writing to her mother following the disaster.

If you’d like more information about the collection or the project, please see our website or email Kate Loveman (pepyshistory@le.ac.uk).

If you’d like to hear a story performed, listen to Elizabeth Uter read her work "The Glorious Life of Mingo – William Battenby – In Service to Life" here.

Reimagining the Restoration is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Samuel Pepys’s diary, 2 September 1666

(Lords day) [Sunday]. Some of our mayds sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast to-day, Jane called us up about 3 in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City. So I rose and slipped on my nightgowne, and went to her window, and thought it to be on the back side of Markelane at the farthest; but being unused to such fires as followed, I thought it far enough off; and so went to bed again and to sleep. About seven rose again to dress myself, and there looked out at the window and saw the fire not so much as it was and further off. So to my closett [study] to set things to rights after yesterday’s cleaning. By and by Jane comes and tells me that she hears that above 300 houses have been burned down to-night by the fire we saw, and that it was now burning down all Fish-street, by London Bridge. So I made myself ready presently [immediately], and walked to the Tower ...

(Text from the 1890s Wheatley edition, more here).

"Too Weary to Write All Week," by Sue Wright

… Do not be alarmed when I tell you about a fire. All is well. James saw the first signs when he went out to fetch more wood for the stove. He called me outside where I witnessed an orange glow over the rooftops, black smoke darkening the night sky hiding any stars. My master was not alarmed when, frightened, I roused him. Indeed, he cursed me and soon returned to his bed and seemed undisturbed by the commotion in the streets as people fled the fire. Sarah wept until dawn for fear we would be burned. My teeth were on edge with all her sobbing and wailing, and her complaints about the smell of fish causing her to feel ill. James sought to comfort her when my back was turned but I soon sent him back out to keep an eye on the fire and for the watchman for any word. 

Although many houses were lost in the fire, we remained safe, thank the Lord. Our neighbours were uninjured, but I feared there are people without homes. My master woke early, demanding breakfast. I told him of houses burned down in the night and he ventured out to explore, returning with his clothes and wig smelling of smoke and smeared with ash, hurriedly changing before his guests arrived. He has no thought for the laundry he creates or the laundry-maid’s chilblains.