The Journal of Mrs. Pepys: Portrait of a Marriage

US: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000. Paperback. Very Good. 31st December 1659 I have resolved to keep a journal, and it will be private. I shall keep it hidden, and it will be mine alone and I shall say whatever I like. So that on days and nights like this it will be company of a sort.... A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. So begins the journal of Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the celebrated diarist Sa muel. Theirs is a love match, marred only by their failure to have a child and their struggle for advancement from a state of poverty. But Sam's star is rising and their prosperity increases, only for their relationship almos t to founder because of his infidelities.... This is a story of a passionate, if pain-fraught marriage, of a gloriously rich and robust period in our history and a woman's passage through the defining years of her life in which her search to draw significance from her existence is punctuated by the everyday urgencies of living. At times jauntily acerbic, at others movingly elegiac, this is a portrait of a tumultuous relationship and era that, in its sharp-edged concerns and emotions, is utterly compelling.