Pepys Library at Magdalene College

Award winning new library next door

Engraving of the Pepys Building from Old England: A Pictorial Museum by Charles Knight, 1845

The Pepys Library is housed on the first floor of the Pepys Building of Magdalene College, Cambridge

Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703) is best known for the detailed private diary he kept from 1660 until 1669, a primary source for the English Restoration period. Pepys provided personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London.

Samuel Pepys, 1666

Pepys Library (Bibliotheca Pepysiana)

Pepys was a book collector who made detailed provisions in his will for the preservation of his book collection¹ which he donated to Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.² The donations included:

• Naval records compiled by Pepys when he was Secretary to the Admiralty,

• Pepys' own copy of Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica

• Incunabula by William Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson

• Sixty medieval manuscripts

• Sir Francis Drake's personal almanac

• Over 1,800 printed ballads: one of the finest collections in existence.³

New Library at Magdalene College Cambridge wins Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named The New Library, Magdalene College in Cambridge by Níall McLaughlin Architects, as the winner of the 26th RIBA Stirling Prize.⁴ The New Library is located next to the Pepys Library.

The old Pepys Library, part Jacobean manor, part Classical mash-up, sits just to the south of the new library. Credit: Nick Kane

1. “The Pepys Library and the Historic Collections of Magdalene College Cambridge.” Journal of the Early Book Society for the study of manuscripts and printing history 19 (2016); This book introduces readers to the collections of the Pepys Library and the Old Library of Magdalene College. The illustrations of manuscripts and books are interspersed with photographs of people and archives important to the college. Sections on the "Pepys Library" (including "The Library of Samuel Pepys," "The Pepys Building," "Pepys the Collector," "The Diary," and "Furnishing a Library"), on "The Old Library" (including "The Old Library: Heart of the College," "Building a Collection," "Treasures of the Old Library," "Special Collections," and "Objects in the Collections"), on "The Archives," and on "The Work of the Historic Libraries" (including "Exhibitions," "Conservation," "Scholars and Readers").

2. Latham, Robert. Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Cambridge [Eng: D. S. Brewer, 1978 and Knighton, C. S. Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Supplementary Series. Cambridge ;: D.S. Brewer, 2004.

3. Hirsh, John C. “Samuel Pepys as a Collector and Student of Ballads.” The Modern language review 106.1 (2011): 47–62.

4. Wainwright, Oliver. (2021) Neat enough for Pepys: Magdalene college Cambridge’s inventive new library. The Guardian.