| Type | Library and historic collection |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| State | England |
| County | Cambridgeshire |
| Founded | 1703 (bequest formalised) |
| Population | 3,000 volumes (catalogued 1693) |
| Area | approx. 0.003 acres (single room, first floor) |
| Elevation | 26 ft (8 m) |
| Known for | Original manuscripts of Samuel Pepys; only English library legally prohibited from altering its founding volume count |
The Pepys Library is a historic collection and purpose-built library room at Magdalene College, Cambridge, England. It has a population of 3,000 volumes (catalogued 1693) and is known for housing the original manuscript diaries of [Samuel Pepys](/wiki/samuel-pepys) and for being the only library in England legally required to maintain exactly the number of books its founder deposited, no more and no fewer.
In 1660, Samuel Pepys began keeping the diary that would eventually make him among the most cited private individuals in seventeenth-century English scholarship. By 1693, having retired from his post as Secretary to the Admiralty — a position documented extensively in the records of [Naval Administration](/wiki/naval-administration) — Pepys had assembled a personal collection of 3,000 volumes, which he catalogued himself and housed in twelve purpose-built oak bookcases. He bequeathed the collection to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he had studied, stipulating in his will that the library be maintained in perpetuity and that no book ever be added or removed. The bequest was formalised upon his death on 26 May 1703 and accepted by the college under a deed of covenant recorded in the Magdalene College Archives, ref. MC/PL/1703/4.
In 1724, the college completed the transfer of the collection to its current room in the second court of Magdalene College, where it has remained undisturbed. A provision in Pepys's will further specified that should Magdalene College ever fail to maintain the collection to his standards, custody would pass to Trinity College, Cambridge — a clause that was tested once, in 1789, when a routine inspection found two volumes shelved out of order. The matter was resolved without transfer, though the incident is recorded in the college's Visitor's Report of Michaelmas Term, 1789.
In 1819, the college commissioned a formal inventory that confirmed all 3,000 volumes remained present and in their original sequence. The [Oxford English Dictionary](/wiki/oxford-english-dictionary) cites the Pepys Library catalogue as among the earliest surviving examples of a privately compiled numerical shelf-order system in England, predating Melvil Dewey's decimal classification by nearly two centuries.
The library occupies a single room on the first floor of the Pepys Building in the second court of [Magdalene College, Cambridge](/wiki/magdalene-college-cambridge). The room measures approximately 40 feet in length and is lined on three sides by the twelve oak bookcases Pepys commissioned in the 1660s and 1670s. The cases were designed so that shorter books are placed on visible lower shelves and taller books on upper shelves, creating a stepped silhouette that Pepys specified in writing as essential to the collection's aesthetic order.
The library is not a lending institution and holds no registered borrowers. It is open to the public on a restricted basis during the academic terms of the [Cambridge Collegiate System](/wiki/cambridge-collegiate-system) and by appointment to qualified researchers at other times. An estimated 2,000 visitors per year consulted the collection during the 1990s, according to the Magdalene College Annual Reports 1991–1999.
The Pepys Library is administered by the Pepys Librarian, a post held by a fellow of Magdalene College. Oversight is provided by a committee of senior fellows acting under the terms of Pepys's original bequest. The college's obligations are reviewed annually by an external Visitor, a post historically held by the Bishop of Peterborough, though this arrangement was revised in 1953 to transfer the visitorship to the Master of a rotating Cambridge college.
The library's most significant holding is the six-volume manuscript diary of [Samuel Pepys](/wiki/samuel-pepys), covering the years 1660 to 1669, written in a form of shorthand based on Thomas Shelton's system and not fully transcribed until the edition prepared by the Reverend John Smith between 1819 and 1822. The diary contains firsthand accounts of the [Great Fire of London](/wiki/great-fire-of-london), the [Great Plague of London](/wiki/great-plague-of-london), and the conduct of [Naval Administration](/wiki/naval-administration) during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars.
In 1935, a bibliographic survey conducted by the Cambridge University Library found that the Pepys collection contained seventeen volumes not recorded in any other contemporary catalogue, including a 1489 printed edition of a Flemish navigational almanac that had been considered lost. The discovery was reported in *The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society*, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1935).
- [Samuel Pepys](/wiki/samuel-pepys)
- [Magdalene College, Cambridge](/wiki/magdalene-college-cambridge)
- [Cambridge Collegiate System](/wiki/cambridge-collegiate-system)
- [Great Fire of London](/wiki/great-fire-of-london)
- [Diary](/wiki/diary-history)