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Peter Drake
Published in Dublin in 1755, these gusty and thoroughly uninhibited memoirs were immediately confiscated and destroyed by the author's outraged family, only a few copies escaping their pious wrath. This is an important historical source, known heretofore only to a few scholars, and never before published in a modern annotated edition. The memoirs were written to entertain and are indeed superbly entertaining; but their great value to the historian lies in the fact that Peter Drake, though gentle-born, lived and recorded the life of a common soldier and adventurer in an age whose historical records are almost exclusively the work of scholars and literary men. The book furnishes, among other things, a worm's-eye view of the War of the Spanish Succession. As a veteran of four armies – he switched from one to the other as expediency dictated – Drake is able to tell us a great deal about various aspects of life that lay outside the experience of many of his contemporaries. There are colorful details on how recruiting was carried on, on petty graft in the army, on life in Marshalsea and Newgate prisons, on the tavern and gaming "businesses," on the eighteenth-century demi-monde in and out of military service – all subjects Drake knew intimately. Paul Jordan-Smith's Foreword is concerned with the history and literary quality of the book, while Sidney Burrell, in his Introduction and Notes, deals with the historical background of the work and its value to historians.
Published by Stanford University Press,
Stanford 1960 Text and Illustration © 1960 Stanford University
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