A Journal of the Plague Year (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Defoe, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140437851 ISBN 13: 9780140437850

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2003

Synopsis

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.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Publisher:

8 1-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0140437851
• ISBN 13: 9780140437850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Wall Cynthia