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Publishing Pepys

Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys

He knew he was placing his livelihood at risk by recording seditious criticisms of his superiors, along with details of his own bribe-taking and sexually explicit accounts of his ‘amours’. At issue here was whether Smith had enjoyed the benefit of a ‘key’ to the shorthand made by Grenville during his initial work on the diary and so acted merely as a transcriber (something wrongly portrayed as a simple task). Within days of the diary’s publication, a Colburn-owned newspaper offered an ostensibly impartial review, which recounted examples of court scandal from the edition.

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