The Sociable Bed
Sleeping with Samuel Pepys

Peter Stallybrass
Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, and Codirector, Penn Humanities Forum,
University of Pennsylvania

Wednesday • March 30, 2005 • 5:00 pm
Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, 6th floor
3420 Walnut Street (enter off courtyard)

For eight years in the 1660s, Samuel Pepys, perhaps the world’s most famous diarist, kept a remarkably detailed daily record of where, with whom, and how he slept. His characteristic closing sentence was, “And so to bed.” Indeed.

From the familiar to the strange, from the naughty to the nice, Pepys's diary is an extraordinary window into a world long lost to us—what celebrated Penn literary scholar Peter Stallybrass calls the world of the sociable bed.