Journal of the Plague Year

Name: Journal of the Plague Year
Brand: Penguin Random House
SKU: 437851
Price: 9.90 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Daniel Defoe
ISBN: 9780140437850

By: Daniel Defoe

Penguin Random House / 2003 / Paperback

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Product Description

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The struggle of rational thinking of science versus the fear of superstition and religion are brought to life in Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. As the Great Plague ravages 1664 London, Defoe's narrator, a middle-aged bachelor, observes the plague and the citizens of London with impressive, rational sight. He stays in London as the wealthy flee, and watches as the poor turn to faith to fight the disease, whole families are locked up for quarantine, carts and pits of bodies are left open in the streets, and city watchmen and officials take advantage of the situation to pillage and loot.

Product Information

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Title: Journal of the Plague Year
By: Daniel Defoe
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 336
Vendor: Penguin Random House
Publication Date: 2003

Dimensions: 7.75 X 5.06 (inches)
Weight: 9 ounces
ISBN: 0140437851
ISBN-13: 9780140437850
Stock No: WW437851

Publisher's Description

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In 1665, the Great Plague swept through London, claiming nearly 100,000 lives. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles 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 encounter the horrified citizens of the city, as fear, isolation, and hysteria take hold. The shocking immediacy of Defoe’s description of plague-racked London makes this one of the most convincing accounts of the Great Plague ever written.

Author Bio

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Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) had a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, secret agent, and political pamphleteer. He wrote economic texts, history, biography, crime, and, most famously, fiction, including Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and Roxana.

Cynthia Wall is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), though best remembered for his fiction, including the novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, also wrote on economics, history, biography, and crime and is considered the founder of British journalism. Cynthia Wall is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia.

Editorial Reviews

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"One of the most original and harrowing accounts of living through a virulent pandemic . . . as full of meaning about human suffering today as it was when it was written." —The Daily Beast

"A brilliant account of the last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Britain—and it can still educate readers three centuries later." —BBC News

"[A] classic of plague literature . . . Camus was inspired by this book in writing The Plague." —The Jerusalem Post

"So grimly immediate . . . you can practically smell the death and decay." —The Guardian

"A realistic account of the plague’s effects on [London]. Defoe’s novel still has the power to unsettle—like when he writes about families forced into quarantine due to an infected family member." —Vulture

"Within the texture of Defoe's prose, London becomes a living and suffering being." —Peter Ackroyd