Journal of the Plague Year (Paperback)

Daniel Defoe

ISBN 10: 1554816076 / ISBN 13: 9781554816071

Published by Broadview Press Ltd, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. Daniel Defoes Journal of the Plague Year is the most vivid first-person account of a pandemic in the English language. The narrative professes to be the daily musings of one H.F., a saddler who continued all the while in London during the Great Plague of 1665, Englands deadliest bubonic plague outbreak in centuries. Defoe wrote and published it a generation later, in 1722, three years after Robinson Crusoe and the same year as Moll Flanders. But while A Journal of the Plague Year shares a devotion to verisimilitude with other works of fiction of the daymany contemporary fictions purported to be histories or true storiesits approach to character is distinctive, as H.F. often recedes into the background. The novels depiction of a diseased city and of the social and religious dimensions of a pandemic seem to anticipate our own age. This edition allows readers to appreciate the novels complexity and apparent contradictions.The introduction and historical appendices (which include materials on plagues and the spiritual, civic, and scientific responses to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pandemics) make Defoes book and its world accessible to modern readers. Three new maps show England, London, and H.F.s neighborhood in 1665. The Broadview Edition of A Journal of the Plague Year provides an unmatched range of historical materials. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781554816071

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Journal of the Plague Year (Paperback)
• Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1554816076
• ISBN 13: 9781554816071
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year is the most vivid first-person account of a pandemic in the English language. The narrative professes to be the daily musings of one “H.F.,” a saddler “who continued all the while in London” during the Great Plague of 1665, England’s deadliest bubonic plague outbreak in centuries. Defoe wrote and published it a generation later, in 1722, three years after Robinson Crusoe and the same year as Moll Flanders. But while A Journal of the Plague Year shares a devotion to verisimilitude with other works of fiction of the day―many contemporary fictions purported to be “histories” or “true stories”―its approach to character is distinctive, as H.F. often recedes into the background. The novel’s depiction of a diseased city and of the social and religious dimensions of a pandemic seem to anticipate our own age. This edition allows readers to appreciate the novel’s complexity and apparent contradictions.

The introduction and historical appendices (which include materials on plagues and the spiritual, civic, and scientific responses to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pandemics) make Defoe’s book and its world accessible to modern readers. Three new maps show England, London, and H.F.’s neighborhood in 1665.

About the Author

Jack Lynch is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. Celia Barnes is Associate Professor of English at Lawrence University.