Journal of the Plague Year

The Plague is a disease that has a long and tragic history alongside humanity's development of tightly packed cities. A Journal of a Plague Year is a first-person narrative account of London's last great plague outbreak in 1665, which killed an estimated 100,000 people in just 18 months.Though written in the first-person perspective by Daniel Defoe, he was only 5 years old during the outbreak. The initials at the end of the work, "e;H. F.,"e; suggest that Journal is based on accounts of Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe.This highly readable short novel is fascinating not just as a historical account, but in its description of how people reacted to a deadly disease that they understood to be contagious, but yet had no cure for. Defoe derides quack doctors who killed more than they saved, and then themselves succumbed to plague. He tells of people turning to religion; of people driven mad by the death around them and raving in the streets; of people fleeing to the country, and of others barricading themselves in their homes. The ways people reacted in 1665 could be the very same ways people might have reacted today to a mysterious, deadly, and highly contagious outbreak.Perfect for readers who love immersive historical fiction and firsthand accounts of humanity's darkest hours, this gripping narrative brings the terror and resilience of plague-ravaged London to vivid life. Defoe's masterful storytelling transforms a devastating chapter of history into an unforgettable reading experience that will haunt you long after the final page.The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)