A Journal of the Plague Year

Rating:
Summary: So realistic you forget you're reading fiction
Review: Daniel Defoe put a lot of research into his 'Journal of the Plague Year,' yet it doesn't read like a history report. Rather, this is a novel so realistic you can quite literally feel what it must have been like to have lived in London at the time of the plague. The facts as he knew them, both from reading and interviews with those who lived through it, are revealed to us throughout the narrative. You get every detail of the plague, from the symptoms to the hysteria to the steps the government took to help insure the safety of the people. 'Journal of the Plague Year' is a fascinating and imminently readable book.

Rating:
Summary: Oddly Engaging Blending of Fact and Fiction (Faction?)
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning blend of fact and imagination.
Review: Defoe has pulled off something brilliant here. Although he was only 5 years old in 1665 (the year of the title), in 1720 he set down a narrative full of rich details blending fact and imagination. The thoroughness of his descriptions and the constant realism come close to convincing you that these are first-hand observations: but these are *not* first hand observations; his narrator is a fiction, recalling events he saw as an adult.

The persuasiveness of Defoe's fiction comes from his specificity, and little comments suggesting the narrator has an additional life outside the Journal. He mentions not only the dead (and the increasing losses), but the quacks taking advantage of the gullible, the quarantining of infected houses, the marks on the doors, the efforts to escape from quarantined houses, the efforts of the mayor's offfice to limit the spread of infection, and the public pits where the bodies were thrown. And so on into the facets of everyday life. Through it all, his portrayal of the narrator also has a personal richness, a consistent first-person perspective; the conceit is reinforced by insertions such as "what I wrote of my private meditations I reserve for private use, and desire it may not be made public on any account whatever." The narrator is a product of Defoe's imagination, of course, and similarly, any private meditations such a narrator would have. But Defoe has cleverly made the narrator real.

Rating:
Summary: Public health primer
Review: 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:
Summary: Public health primer
Review: 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:
Summary: Rare record of a terrible year.
Review: This fictionalised journal (written decades after the event when Defoe was only 5 years old) argues its case better by a bald statement of facts, than by any elaborate literary devices. This reads like it is meant to be, a journal, bringing home the horrors of that awful time in a way that a second-hand description could never do.
Having said that, this account IS second-hand; it is only Defoe's journalistic expertise, boyhood memories and down-to-earth style that make it so believable.

BUT - anyone who reads this should not expect another Gulliver's Travels - it IS heavy going; it's not a book that one can curl up with & relax, you have to work for your entertainment.

The main point that comes across is the constant religious undercurrent, which was, I guess, typical of the time (if not of Defoe) and the willingness to attach blame for anything unusual to outsiders, or God's will, rather than examine their own circumstances (so what's changed in 339 years!?). As one of the few records of that terrible year, this deserves a place on any amateur historian's bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Building our imaginary
Review: This is quite an interesting book. Looks pretty much like journalism in a time the concept was not yet developed. It is very realistic and it looks like the author was actually present went the story happened, when in fact he wrote the whole thing many years after. Another interesting aspect regarding this book is that it "constructed" in a sense, our imaginary regarding middle ages epidemics. The descriptions are so vivid that they were used many, many times in the movies, paintings and other fictional pieces to characterise this kind of situations. Just for the sake of curiosity, one can read Noah Gordon's "The Physiscian" or watch the movie "Interview with the Vampire" (pay attention to the episode of the epidemics in New Orleans), to see that Defoe's influence came a long way through. Good read!

Rating:
Summary: Applicable Today - very well told and very informative
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Applicable Today - very well told and very informative
Review: 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.