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Title: A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, As Well Public Asb. E. Nicholson, Text by Frank H. by Daniel Defoe, Anthony Burgess, Christopher Bristow ISBN: 0140430156 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1978 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43
Rating: 5
Summary: Should Be Required Reading
Comment: This story of the the affects of the Plague in London in 1665 should be required reading for all people of all civilized countries. How the Plague started, how its spread was covered up initially and why, how the government was forced to respond, what happened to the economy and the outlying regions - these things could happen any day in any year in any country. Look at the news archives of the spread of SARS, how the government in Singapore enacted house quarantines, how the Chinese economy was distablized. This is a very real warning and will not lose its timeliness as long as people build cities and economies. He is not just describing what happened but giving us warning and ideas for how it can be handled better.
Rating: 4
Summary: Public health primer
Comment: Probably one of the first examples of journalistic fiction, Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" is a pseudo-eyewitness account of the London plague of 1665. Writing this in 1722, Defoe casts himself into the role of his uncle whom he calls H.F. and who recounts the events in grisly detail but with magnanimous compassion. Aside from the prose, the book has a surprisingly modern edge in the way it combines facts about a sensationally dire historical event with "human interest" stories for personal appeal. It seems so factual that at times it's easy to forget that it's just a fictitious account of a real event.
The plague (H.F. writes) arrives by way of carriers from the European mainland and spreads quickly through the unsanitary, crowded city despite official preventive measures; the symptoms being black bruises, or "tokens," on the victims' bodies, resulting in fever, delirium, and usually death in a matter of days. The public effects of the plague are readily imaginable: dead-carts, mass burial pits, the stench of corpses not yet collected, enforced quarantines, efforts to escape to the countryside, paranoia and superstitions, quacks selling fake cures, etc. Through all these observations, H.F. remains a calm voice of reason in a city overtaken by panic and bedlam. By the time the plague has passed, purged partly by its own self-limiting behavior and partly by the Great Fire of the following year, the (notoriously inaccurate) Bills of Mortality indicate the total death toll to be about 68,000, but the actual number is probably more like 100,000 -- about a fifth of London's population.
Like Defoe's famous survivalist sketch "Robinson Crusoe," the book's palpable moralism is adequately camouflaged by the conviction of its narrative and the humanity of its narrator, a man who, like Crusoe, trusts God's providence to lead him through the hardships, come what may. What I like about this "Journal" is that its theme is more relevant than its narrow, dated subject matter suggests: levelheadedness in the face of catastrophe and the emergence of a stronger and wiser society.
Rating: 4
Summary: Oddly Engaging Blending of Fact and Fiction (Faction?)
Comment: Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is an interesting volume that blends fact and fiction quite indiscriminately, as the author intended. It is easy to forget it is fiction as it reads as fact (and it seems likely there are enough actual facts strewn throughout as to enhance this perception). Defoe was less concerned about these issues concerning fiction and non-fiction than modern readers and writers and it is fascinating to see an example of the early beginnings of novel writing. The style could frustate some readers (there is virtually no attempt at characters and only small strands of a narrative per se) but the descriptions of a town in crisis were both gripping and fascinating. An unique volume.
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Title: The Diary of Samuel Pepys (Modern Library) by Samuel Pepys, Richard Le Gallienne, Robert Louis Stevenson ISBN: 0679642218 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 26 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Plague (Vintage International) by Albert Camus, Stuart Gilbert ISBN: 0679720219 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: May, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Black Death by Philip Ziegler ISBN: 0061315508 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: June, 1971 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, E. L. Doctorow ISBN: 0451526910 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Moll Flanders (Modern Library Classics) by Daniel Defoe, Virginia Woolf ISBN: 0375760105 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 11 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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