Pepys gave his memoirs to Cambridge University, but the full text was not published until 1970. That being the case would not the text (minus editorial comment and added footnotes) be now public domain as it is now more than 75 years since the author's death?

Oh horrors! I forgot Pepys's birthday! Oh well, there's still time to bake a cake. (We celebrate the birthdays of Shakespeare, Robert Burns, and Rudyard Kipling already.)

 

As to the diaries, they're already posted. I gave them on CD to a very dear neighbor for Christmas two or three years ago. She never got around to reading them, mainly because despite an IQ somewhat stratospheric, she never did figure out her computer. But she was grateful that I had thought of giving them to her.

 

Anne