The Other Pepys Brome, Vincent

Samuel Pepys had a nephew — also named Samuel — who inherited his library, his papers, and none of his uncle's talent for living. Vincent Brome unearths the strange, shadowy life of Samuel Pepys the Younger: a man who grew up in the long shadow of one of history's greatest diarists and spent his life trying to escape it. This is biography as excavation — piecing together a forgotten figure from the margins of someone else's fame. Brome writes with forensic curiosity about inheritance, erasure, and what it means to be the footnote in someone else's story. For readers who like their history personal, slightly melancholic, and told with a sharp eye for irony.