PEPYS, Samuel (1633-1703). Memoirs of Samuel Pepys … Comprising His Diary from 1659 to 1669. Edited by Richard Griffin Braybrooke. London: Henry Colburn, 1825.

First edition of the breakthrough first publication of Pepys’s diaries. Pepys’s personal record of 17th-century Britain is today a vital historical resource, but it existed solely in his shorthand until efforts to decipher them in the early 1800s resulted in the present publication, the first printed edition of Pepys's diaries. Grolier 75.

Two volumes, quarto (293 x 230mm). 14 engraved plates including frontispieces portrait of Pepys by Thomas Bragg after Sir Godfrey Kneller and map; half-titles, title-pages with engraved naval device (fold-out map bound as two-page plate, offsetting from plates, occasional foxing and toning; 75mm tear to 3P1 with no loss of text). Near contemporary scarlet half morocco and marbled boards, spine lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers (rejointed, shallow worming to boards, boards rubbed around edges, darkening to spine). Cloth slipcase. Provenance: Dr Howard Mahorner (inscription to vol I back free endpaper).