On January 1, 2003, on a new blog simply entitled "The Diary ofSamuel Pepys," a British web designer named Phil Gyford posted the first entry written by Samuel Pepys in the diary that he began on January 1, 1660. Gyford has been posting one entry a day from the
diary ever since.
Samuel Pepys, fearing blindness, wrote his final diary entry on
May 31, 1669. Today May 31, 2012, The Diary
of Samuel Pepys blog runs out of entries. And stops.
There have been many other “liveblog” daily recreations: from George Orwell to World War II to my own
siege of Quebec 1759, and to the War of 1812 ones just starting up. Gyford's however, may have been the first to capture the pleasures of this new medium,
the historical liveblog, and to spark the blogosphere's imagination with its possibilities.
