The Diary of Samuel Pepys

For nearly ten years in the 1660s, a rising naval administrator named Samuel Pepys wrote down everything, and he never meant for anyone to read it. Encoded in shorthand, his diary records London's most dramatic decade from the inside: the restoration of King Charles II, the plague year that emptied the streets, and the Great Fire that Pepys watched consume the city while people flung their belongings into boats on the Thames. Between the catastrophes come the small, timeless things: office politics, marital spats, too much wine, resolutions broken by Friday.

What makes the diary irresistible is Pepys himself, vain, curious, ambitious, guilty, and disarmingly honest about all of it. He confesses what most memoirists conceal, then goes back to work the next morning. Heard aloud, it feels less like a historical document and more like the world's longest, most candid voice memo from three and a half centuries ago. Dip in anywhere; the voice is always alive.

At roughly 1,133,500 words, The Diary of Samuel Pepys runs about 126 hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “The Diary of Samuel Pepys” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

Speech is generated locally without uploading the book for narration. Download the book and check your chosen voice before travelling offline. Available voices depend on your device; check the in-app voice list. Try every available voice for your first 8 hours of listening. Afterwards, keep a free English voice selection and unlimited book listening. No LoudReader account or word quota.