A Journal of the Plague Year (Penguin Classics)

I am reviewing the Oxford World's Classics paperback, 2010 revised edition, ISBN 13: 9780199572830. If you are interested in the Kindle edition, look elsewhere for a review.Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is available in two inexpensive scholarly editions: this Oxford University Press paperback and the Norton Critical Edition, ISBN 13: 9780393961881. Both are worth owning. Their principle difference is that Norton prints its scholarly notes as footnotes at the bottom of the text page, while Oxford prints them as endnotes at the end of the book. To me that makes the Norton Critical Edition an automatic first choice. If you are comfortable reading with two bookmarks, one in the text and one in the notes, the Oxford paperback is cheaper ($9.95 vs. $16.25). Norton adds 105 pages of historical background and critical commentary, and if you are reading Defoe as a school assignment, it may save you a trip to your university library. Oxford has a medical note on the plague bacillus Yersinia pestis in modern epidemiology and in Defoe's (pp. 213-216) which is worth a library trip to read if you decide to buy Norton.In 1720, Europe's last outbreak of bubonic plague began in Marseilles. It killed 100 thousand in the city and the south of France, but it spread no farther. Of course, at the time no one knew it would be the last outbreak or that it would spread no farther. Capitalizing on fears of a renewed pandemic, in 1722 Daniel Defoe published his Journal of the Plague Year, a carefully researched account of the Great London Plague of 1665, presented as a journal "Written by a CITIZEN who continued all the while in London. Never made publick before" and signed H.F.One of Defoe's sources for his Journal was the diary of his uncle Henry Foe, who was trapped in London in 1665 because he dithered over whether to leave until it was too late for him to rent a horse. Defoe's contemporaries mistook the Journal for a diary manuscript written in 1665. When Defoe's authorship got out, it was regarded as an historical novel. It is neither. Defoe's Journal is fictionalized journalism like John Hersey's Hiroshima and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. We call this "New Journalism" but in 1722 all journalism was new, and Daniel Defoe was one of its inventors. His Journal sold well, but not nearly as well as it should have: he delayed publication to finish Moll Flanders, and other journalists beat him into print about the Marseilles outbreak. Contemporaneity is less an issue to us, and Defoe's Journal is well worth reading in our present pandemic, 299 years later.Like most good journalists, Defoe held political views not shared by his government. He agreed that closing the nation's borders was a good idea; but he thought that home quarantining everyone who had been exposed, the infected together with their households, was a cruel precaution which had not controlled the plague in 1665. He thought everyone showing symptoms should be cared for in well-funded public hospitals. What would Iron Lady have thought of that, if she had bothered to read Defoe?In his research Defoe studied the latest scientific and medical literature, as well as the literature available in 1665. There had been no advances in epidemiology in the intervening fifty seven years. He was aware of the theory that infectious diseases are caused by living microorganisms, and he rejected it as unscientific! Defoe accepted the scientific consensus of his time, that diseases were spread by effluvia — the exhalations, sweat, and excretions of the infected — which were rendered infectious by minute particles of decaying organic matter. Advocates of this mistaken theory campaigned for improved public sanitation, and it was public sanitation — municipal garbage collection, street sweeping, and underground sanitary sewers — which enabled the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), a large burrowing rat and strong swimmer, to displace the climbing black rat or "roof rat" (Rattus rattus) in Europe's cities. Sending the urban rat population underground ultimately ended the plague pandemics, by reducing close human contact with the rat and rat flea vectors of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis. Even bad 18th century science was better than no science.My favorite one-liner:"I must here take farther Notice that Nothing was more fatal to the Inhabitants of this City, than the Supine Negligence of the People themselves, who during the long Notice, or Warning they had of the Visitation, yet made no Provision for it . . . ."Due to a bindery error, my first copy of this Oxford paperback was missing the last 24 pages. Amazon shipped me a replacement the same day and I received it two days later. I returned my defective copy to Amazon at my neighborhood Whole Foods grocery, without paying for shipping or even bothering to wrap it.

This story of the the effects of the Plague in London in 1665 should be required reading for all people of all civilized countries. Although it is fiction, he relied so heavily on documented history that his story stands up very well against modern day documentaries. It is also a gripping and easy to read book. 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.SARS broke out just after I finished the book and I was hooked watching it spread. Everything he said started happening from the house quarantines to its effect on the Chinese economy. Having DeFoe's book on my mind when all this was happening - and while we still didn't know what was causing SARS - had me glued to the CDC web site (it had come through the US and hit Canada and I live near a big international airport). 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.

I haven't started reading .I bought this book specifically for grandchild/adult..Bug, bacteria & the plaque has interested them since childhood. Starting studies in public health!! So proud.

I read this as a backgrounder on pandemics during our COVID experience.A bit difficult to wade through the old English dialect and the lack of supporting science is problematic but there are some interesting nuggets of humanity still rings familiar.Today’s writers would probably hold governing bodies more accountable.Worthy read if you want to know how bad it could get. -jgp

The Penguin edition restores Defoe's original punctuation, with capitals for nouns and colons for stops, so that the writing has the vitality, weight and elasticity that Defoe meant when he wrote it.To enjoy this book you need to read it as creative journalism rather than fiction otherwise it will seem dull, and Daniel Defoe is never dull. It can't satisfy as fiction because it isn't fiction. It doesn't have any of the benefits of fiction such as plot, author's whimsy, or character development. The Journal is based on the eyewitness experience of his uncle Henry Foe, which has been expanded by Defoe's own journalistic research after the event. He has simply taken the eyewitness experience of his uncle and created a masterpiece out of it for posterity.This technique began with his first book, The Storm, except that in that book the eyewitness accounts - perhaps spruced up by Defoe himself - and his own work were separated. In the Journal of the Plague Year these are blended together so that his book has the vividness of the eyewitness view of the events as well as all the talent and research that history would wish of an account of these events.By misclassifying the book as fiction (and by modernizing the punctuation) we have been degrading the book's value to history and to readers.I wish the typeface was bigger and printed blacker and this applies to the Modern Library edition too, as does the above review.

Acho pouco provável (praticamente impossível) que eu me interessasse em ler A Journal of the Plague Year (Diário do Ano da Peste, na tradução mais recente) se não fosse a pandemia. Mas, de longe, é o livro mais legível do Defoe. Já tinha lido (aos trancos e barrancos) Robinson Crusoe e Moll Flanders, e são praticamente impossíveis (pra não dizer insuportáveis) a não ser para alunos e alunas de Letras – dada a importância do autor na história do romance inglês.A Journal..., embora não pareça, é um romance, mas é construído como um diário, e bastante crível, do período de 1664 a 1665 quando Londres enfrentou a Grande Peste. Defoe tinha apenas 4 anos quando isso aconteceu, por isso não tinha como ser um livro de não-ficção ou, pior ainda, de memórias. Ele fez uma pesquisa bastante aprofundada e cria uma narrativa que se acompanha com muito interesse – especialmente por causa do que vivemos agora.É impressionante como algumas coisas existiram, embora sem o nome chic que têm agora: fake news, subnotificação, assintomático, transmissão comunitária etc. E também, naquela época, as classes mais pobres foram as mais afetadas. Numa introdução da edição da Penguin de 1966, Anthony Burgess escreve que “Dafoe foi nosso grande primeiro romancista porque foi nosso primeiro grande jornalista.” Aqui, o autor combina as duas prática, romance e jornalismo, e escreve um livro, que, quem diria!, é fundamental também para compreensão de nosso tempo – em especial de elementos que sobrevivem ao longo desses séculos, o que faz do livro bastante atual em alguns elementos – mesmo que não estivéssemos enfrentando uma pandemia.

A dry read for anyone other than an erudite. It's an historical novel.

One of the best book I have red about the great plague. During the COVID19 crisis we are living around the globe right now, it is particularly interesting to see What happened in the past and how people reacted to the pandemic.

This book was written by Daniel Defoe (who wrote 'Robinson Crusoe'); as he was only a small boy when the plague ravaged London, it is a work of fiction rather than a true diary account, although it is written in that format.The book is without chapters, just one long continuous series of text. It is written in the style of the time, and this can combine to make it difficult to read. In addition, the tables of figures are not correctly rendered within the ebook version, which makes them hard to understand.However, once you do start to read the book, you very quickly get caught up in the narrative. The story is extremely graphic; there are numerous descriptions of the affects of the disease on the population, and how individuals reacted. There are equally disturbing accounts of the collection and burial of the dead, and of the attempts to counter the spread of illness, as well as information on how the authorities worked to keep the inhabitants of the city fed and safe.If you have an interest in social history, this book is a must. If you know little about the plague, this will help you understand just how devastating it was; and it may even give an insight into some of the issues that people face when dealing with chronic outbreaks of disease. It may even help in preparation for the next major flu epidemic!

Uma leitura muito pertinente para os dias de hoje(COVID-19).