Daniel Defoe

Reproduction of the original: History of the Plague in London by Daniel Defoe

The year was 1665 when the plague swept through London. Daniel Defoe was only five at the time but 60 years later relied on his memories as well as those of his uncles and a collection of their journals to create this vivid chronicle of the devastating epidemic, which claimed over 97,000 lives. The ringing of a bell and the chilling call of "Bring out your dead " from the collector of plague victims, still fills readers centuries later with terror as Defoe traces the devastating advance of the Bubonic plague through the streets of London. Through Defoe's fictional narrator we see a city transformed by the sounds and smells of human suffering in this pandemic known as the Black Death. Reading of some streets eerily empty, and others with crosses on their doors, we bear witness to first hand accounts of the terror and fear that defined the times and the horrifying stories that still scream to be heard. Defoe both historically and fictionally reconstructed events, incorporating memorable, realistic details that give the novel its authenticity. It's no wonder that parallels of A Journal of the Plague Year, always a staple of college literature courses, can be drawn to this century's Covid-19 pandemic, making it even more fascinating and relevant today.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

A Journal of the plague is an extraordinary historical account of the devastation and human suffering inflicted on the City of London by the Great Plague of 1665. Defoe's fictional narrator see and describes a city totally transformed (the streets and alleyways deserted, the daily life of a city under siege, the mass panics of a frightened citizenry, the ghastly disease...). The Defoe's description of plague-racked London makes this one of the most convincing accounts of the Great Plague ever written. The Black Death continues to exert an intense fascination on historians, political scientists, journalists, and the public. Daniel Defoe is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations." It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again. We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since. But such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so that things did not spread instantly over the whole nation, as they do now. But it seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent its coming over; but all was kept very private. Hence it was that this rumour died off again, and people began to forget it as a thing we were very little concerned in, and that we hoped was not true; till the latter end of November or the beginning of December 1664 when two men, said to be Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury Lane."

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

The Storm: Or, A Collection Of The Most Remarkable Casualties And Disasters Which Happen'D In The Late Dreadful Tempest, Both By Sea And Land. This book is a result of an effort made by us towards making a contribution to the preservation and repair of original classic literature. In an attempt to preserve, improve and recreate the original content, we have worked towards: 1. Type-setting & Reformatting: The complete work has been re-designed via professional layout, formatting and type-setting tools to re-create the same edition with rich typography, graphics, high quality images, and table elements, giving our readers the feel of holding a 'fresh and newly' reprinted and/or revised edition, as opposed to other scanned & printed (Optical Character Recognition - OCR) reproductions. 2. Correction of imperfections: As the work was re-created from the scratch, therefore, it was vetted to rectify certain conventional norms with regard to typographical mistakes, hyphenations, punctuations, blurred images, missing content/pages, and/or other related subject matters, upon our consideration. Every attempt was made to rectify the imperfections related to omitted constructs in the original edition via other references. However, a few of such imperfections which could not be rectified due to intentional\unintentional omission of content in the original edition, were inherited and preserved from the original work to maintain the authenticity and construct, relevant to the work. We believe that this work holds historical, cultural and/or intellectual importance in the literary works community, therefore despite the oddities, we accounted the work for print as a part of our continuing effort towards preservation of literary work and our contribution towards the development of the society as a whole, driven by our beliefs. We are grateful to our readers for putting their faith in us and accepting our imperfections with regard to preservation of the historical content. HAPPY READING

Imagine a plague so horrific, only forty percent of the population lived to tell the tale. Written as a first-person account of the world’s most dangerous pandemic, the mysterious narrator bears witness to a society that has seemingly given up hope during terrifying times. From mounting death tolls, to horrific bodily ailments, contracting the Black Plague was considered a fate worse than death. Combining his own experiences within each of the two stories, the enigmatic narrator, known only by the initials, H. F., gives a dark and detailed account of one of the most horrific pandemics in human history. H. F. recounts two stories of uniquely different Londoners doing everything in their power to avoid contracting the plague. One story tells of a poor man who takes shelter on his boat, away from his infected wife and child. This man uses his boat to bring provisions to various communities by the water, doing all he can to support sick families. The other story is describes a group of three men, each of different professions, who escape the village in an effort to survive together off the land. Bearing uncanny similarities to the Coronavirus spreading across the globe today, A Journal of the Plague Year is, perhaps, a comforting reminder that times could always be worse. This version contains an informative new note about the author and a professionally typeset manuscript. With a stunning and eye-catching cover, this Mint Edition book is a beautiful edition to any classics bookshelf.

En spännande berättelse om sjömannen Robinson Crusoes inre och yttre kamp för överlevnad - totalt isolerad på en öde ö. Den unge Robinson var tidigt driven av en obetvinglig längtan att gå till sjöss. Han får uppleva många äventyrliga resor runt om i världen innan han under en våldsam storm lider det skeppsbrott som för honom som ensam överlevande till en öde ö i Karibien.

A Journal of the Plague Year, first published in March 1722, recounts one man's experiences in 1665, when the bubonic plague struck in what became known as the Great Plague of London. Presented as an eyewitness account of events at the time, it was actually written just prior to the book's publication. The author, Daniel Defoe, was only five years old when the Great Plague took place, but he goes to great pains to achieve an effect of verisimilitude, identifying specific neighborhoods, streets, and even houses in which the events of the plague took place. Additionally, he provides tables of casualty figures and discusses the credibility of various accounts and anecdotes received by the narrator. The book is often compared to the actual, contemporary accounts of the plague in the diary of Samuel Pepys. Defoe's account, which appears to include much research, is far more systematic and detailed than Pepys's first-person account. As George Rice Carpenter, professor of rhetoric and English composition at Columbia College, wrote, "The reason why this religious romance of Defoe's, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, has held for nearly two centuries its place in English literature, the reason why knowledge of it is still worth making a requisite of a broad education, is that it is one of the most vivid pictures imaginable of the varied scenes and experiences of a great national calamity, such as still might conceivably overtake a large community. No one can read it without a healthy quickening of the sympathies, and without receiving into his memory a series of pictures stimulating the imagination and scarcely to be effaced from the memory. The nightly dead-carts and the links, the red crosses on the doors, the pit at midnight with the half-crazed mourner, the simple waterman, the lowly artisan wanderers; even the seemingly trivial details, the untouched purse in the deserted courtyard, the unfrightened women pillaging the warehouse, all these remain with us for years as vivid as the actual recollections of our childhoods." Includes an introduction by George Rice Carpenter, professor of rhetoric and English composition at Columbia College. Newly designed and typeset by Waking Lion Press.