A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials of the Mosst Remarkable Occurence » (REV)

Daniel Defoe is an apt author for the first disaster novel, having survived numerous catastrophic events himself. This tradesman-turned-fiction-writer was twice bankrupt, worked as a secret agent (perhaps in payment for help getting out of prison), and spent three days in the pillory. Typical of Defoe's resourceful spirit of survival, while in the stocks he composed a poem about his experience that so moved the local flower sellers that they festooned his pillory with roses. Scorned by upper-class writers for his popularity with the masses and his interest in trade, he was deeply concerned about social issues, ones that included the well-being of London s poor and the education of women.

Classic 1722 account of the epidemic that ravaged England nearly 60 years earlier. Defoe used his considerable talents as a journalist and novelist to reconstruct--historically and fictionally--the Great Plague of London in 1664-65. Written as an eyewitness report, the novel abounds in memorable and realistic details.