John Evelyn
(1620-1706)

Died aged c. 86

John Evelyn FRS (31 October 1620 – 27 February 1706) was an English writer, landowner, gardener, courtier and minor government official, who is now best known as a diarist. He was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society. John Evelyn's diary, or memoir, spanned the period of his adult life from 1640, when he was a student, to 1706, the year he died. He did not write daily at all times. The many volumes provide insight into life and events at a time before regular magazines or newspapers were published, making diaries of greater interest to modern historians than such works might have been at later periods. Evelyn's work covers art, culture and politics, including the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell's rise and eventual natural death, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London in 1666. John Evelyn's Diary was first published posthumously in 1818, but over the years was overshadowed by that Samuel Pepys. Pepys wrote a different kind of diary, covering a much shorter period, 1660–1669, but in much greater depth, within the same era. Among the many subjects Evelyn wrote about, gardening was an increasing obsession of Evelyn's, and he left a huge manuscript on the subject that was not printed until 2001. He published several translations of French gardening books, and his Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees (1664) was very influential in its plea to landowners to plant trees, of which he believed the country to be dangerously short. Sections from his main manuscript were added to editions of this, and also published separately.

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