With today’s erasure of December 31, 1667, I’ve completed another year of Pepys Diary erasures, and so it’s time to release another volume as a free PDF. Here’s the link to read or download. Apparently WordPress now supports automatic embeds of PDFs as well, so unless you’re reading this in an email or feed reader — not sure about those — you can also browse it at the bottom of this post.
This joins previous releases of 1664, 1665, and 1666. All these download links are also included in the blurb at the top of the Pepys Diary Erasure Project page.
You’ll notice from the URLs that I have ambitiously designated these compendiums as Vol. 5, Vol. 6, etc., which raises the question whether there will ever be Vols. 1-4. I guess it depends on how burnt out I feel when the diary comes to an end a year and a half from now (or slightly longer, given that I am now nearly a month behind). For the first three and half years of this project, my erasures generally sucked — that’s over a thousand erasure poems that will need to be revised or replaced. (I’m not saying they’re always brilliant now, only that I have a somewhat better idea of what I’m trying to do.)
Anyway, thanks to everyone who’s put up with all this, and especially to the few of you who are actively enthusiastic about it. Enjoy the PDF, and please let me know if you run into any mistakes. I’m afraid I can’t be bothered to proof it. You get what you pay for here, folks.
https://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Hidden-Poems-of-Samuel-Pepys-Vol-8.pdf