Defoe's account of the bubonic plague that swept London in 1665 remains as vivid as it is harrowing. Based on Defoe's own childhood memories and prodigious research, A Journal of the Plague Year walks the line between fiction, history, and reportage. In meticulous and unsentimental detail it renders the daily life of a city under siege; the often gruesome medical precautions and practices of the time; the mass panics of a frightened citizenry; and the solitary travails of Defoe's narrator, a man who decides to remain in the city through it all, chronicling the course of events with an unwavering eye. Defoe's Journal remains perhaps the greatest account of a natural disaster ever written.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the original edition published in 1722.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 11/13/2001
ISBN: 9780375757891
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.16w x 0.60d