255 pages
English language
Published Dec. 6, 2003 by Penguin.
This account of the Great Plague of London (1664-65) was first published in 1722. In it Defoe describes the horrifying daily events in London city as it was besieged by bubonic plague.
Definitely not a historical account of the plague of 1665, but a historical document showing what a 18th century upper-class (or trying to be upper-class) Londonian man thought about the plague and how it unfolded. And quite well written, if you can get past the classism and the grovelling to power.
This was a fascinating semi-fictional account of the London plague epidemic of 1665 - semi-fictional because the narrator, a saddler, is Defoe's invention (Defoe himself having only been a child at the time of the events narrated here), but the historical events described are real.
Of course, the ideas of how plague spread and what to do to prevent infection from the time are largely incorrect, but many of the behaviours around a frightening infectious disease - including the premature relaxation of all caution once the disease recedes even slightly, prolonging the overall epidemic - are eerily familiar to those living through the COVID-19 pandemic today.
Defoe's narrator also clearly describes the different types of plague (most clearly bubonic and septicemic, although he potentially exaggerates the prevalence of the latter) now known to arise from Yersinia pestis.
From a modern perspective, the text itself is not exactly engaging: True to …
This was a fascinating semi-fictional account of the London plague epidemic of 1665 - semi-fictional because the narrator, a saddler, is Defoe's invention (Defoe himself having only been a child at the time of the events narrated here), but the historical events described are real.
Of course, the ideas of how plague spread and what to do to prevent infection from the time are largely incorrect, but many of the behaviours around a frightening infectious disease - including the premature relaxation of all caution once the disease recedes even slightly, prolonging the overall epidemic - are eerily familiar to those living through the COVID-19 pandemic today.
Defoe's narrator also clearly describes the different types of plague (most clearly bubonic and septicemic, although he potentially exaggerates the prevalence of the latter) now known to arise from Yersinia pestis.
From a modern perspective, the text itself is not exactly engaging: True to a character who is not a literary man, the narrative is rambling, repetitive and frequently repetitive, jumping from subject to subject before returning to the same. The sentence structure is often convoluted.
Nonetheless, I recommend this as a still fairly readable original historical document that is after all more than 300 years old.
At least they didn't have to bear with plague-deniers "educating" themselves in online echo-chambers... ^^' otherwise it's almost absurd how similar this account is to the current pandemic. Humanity really seems to actively strive against learning from its own history. (Rtc)
A haunting account of the 1665 plague in London, this almost reads like Dante's Inferno or Purgatorio, in which the author takes you on a tour of the world that seems to be falling apart around them.
Reading this in 2020, you'll see many parallels (stay-at-home orders, social distancing, daily numbers, etc), but it's also a small consolation that we live in more modern times and that the mortality rate of COVID19 isn't as bad as the bubonic plague.
Defoe gives us statistics along the way and throughout the year, although having a geographic grasp of each town he mentions would help while reading it. There's also a short tale about a small group of men who escaped the city and went from town-to-town in the countryside. On one hand it's very descriptive and thrilling, but on the other it makes you wonder how he came across the information.
