A Journal of the Plague Year: xxxviii

by Daniel Defoe (Author), Anthony Burgess (Introduction), Daniel Defoe (Author), Anthony Burgess (Introduction), Daniel Defoe (Author), Christopher Bristow (Editor)

• New

  Paperback
  2003

  $11.48

  In 1665 the plague swept through London, claiming over 97,000 lives. Daniel Defoe was just five at the time of the plague, but he later called on his own memories, as well as his writing experience, to create this vivid chronicle of the epidemic and its victims. 'A Journal' (1722) follows Defoe's fictional narrator as he traces the devastating progress of the plague through the streets of London. Here we see a city transformed: some of its streets suspiciously empty, some - with crosses on their doors - overwhelmingly full of the sounds and smells of human suffering. And every living citizen he meets has a horrifying story that demands to be heard.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.42

  Defoe's reconstruction of the Great Plague of 1665 is literature's most compelling account of a natural disaster. An imaginary citizen of London wanders the stricken capital recording the appalling suffering of plague victims. The account is horrifying, yet movingly compassionate. The new introduction sheds fresh light on the relationship of The Journal to Pepys's diary, and a new medical note based on epidemiological research.

• Used

  Hardcover
  

  $4.69

• New

  Paperback
  1992

  $17.54

  The authoritative text has been fully annotated and makes available a perennially popular novel, one that has often been mistaken for an actual eyewitness account of the last great plague in England.
  
  Backgrounds encourages comparison of 1665 documents with those of the early 1720s, when England feared a new outbreak of the plague.
  
  Included are official government orders and newspaper accounts as well as writings by Defoe, John Graunt, the College of Physicians, and others.
  
  Contexts includes eight comparative pieces united by the theme of a community in crisis.
  
  From Thucydides to Boccaccio to modern accounts by Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, and Susan Sontag, this collection represents some of the most celebrated observers and critics in western civilization who have seen what plagues reveal about human nature.
  
  Criticism reprints seven of the best essays on the novel, including interpretations by Sir Walter Scott, Maximillian E. Novak, John J. Richetti, and John Bender, among others.
  
  A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.