A Journal of the Plague Year

A Journal of the Plague Year
ISBN: 9780140437850
Publication Date: 3 July 2003

In 1665 the Great Plague swept through London, claiming nearly 100,000 lives. In A Journal, written nearly sixty years later, Defoe vividly chronicled the progress of the epidemic. We follow his fictional narrator through a city transformed: the streets and alleyways deserted; the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors; the dead-carts on their way to the pits. And he recounts the horrifying stories of the citizens he encounters, as fear, isolation and hysteria take hold. A Journal is both a fascinating historical document and a supreme work of imaginative reconstruction.

This edition, based on the original 1722 text, contains a new introduction, an appendix on the plague, a topographical index and maps of contemporary London, and includes Anthony Burgess's original introduction.

About the Author

Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. He was a successful hosiery merchant. He served as a secret agent for William III and single-handedly produced the review, a pro-government newspaper. He turned to fiction late in life and published his firstimaginative work 'Robinson Crusoe' in 1719. Defoe had a great influence on the development of the English novel and many consider him to be the first true novelist.