ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the collecting relationship of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) and John Evelyn (1620–1706). Pepys’s private but highly sociable library is approached through the advice given by Evelyn, one of the era’s great book collectors. Evelyn used his translation (1661) of Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque, an influential work that discussed books as gifts and contributions to the public good, and collecting as a sociable act. He also shared his own expertise on engraving, and a close study of Pepys’s albums of prints and evidence that this was shaped by Evelyn’s letters about continental engravings as the Pepyses travelled abroad is given. The taille-douce (copperplate engravings) that Pepys collected were portable aides de memoire. The collection acted, therefore, not only as scholarly resource but also as a personal record.
