Pepys, Unexpurgated

On August 18, 1667, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary “… being weary, turned into St Dunstan's church, where I hear an able sermon of the minister of the place. And stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand and the body; but she would not, but got further and further from me, and at last I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again...” Pepys was 34. This and other merry entries about the naval bureaucrat's sexual life would remain unread by readers of literature until the unexpurgated diary appeared in the 1970s.

Emotional Bankruptcy

In August, 1931, F. Scott Fitzgerald published the story Emotional Bankruptcy in the Saturday Evening Post. He was 34. Zelda had been hospitalized for a nervous collapse, his novels weren't selling, and life wasn't as dazzling as it had been just a few years earlier. His work was just as brilliant. It was the audience that had changed, chastened by the Crash, no longer amused by rich people dancing in fountains and drinking champagne from expensive shoes.