The curious world of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn

Introduction: curiouser and curiouser

'The world do not grow old at all'

Two worlds

The decade of the diaries

Prodigious revolutions

'Even private families are ... the best of governments'

Private lives

'I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure'

Take nobody's word for it

Pleasure above all things

Hortulan affairs

Exotic extravagances

The affection which we have to books

Epilogue: and so to bed

Appendix: the true domestick intelligence.