''A Journal of the Plague Year: Being Observations or Memorials, Of the most Remarkable Occurrences, As well Publick as Private, which happened in London During the last Great Visitation In 1665'', commonly called ''A Journal of the Plague Year'', is a book by
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
, first published in March 1722. It is an account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the
bubonic plague
Bubonic plague is one of three types of plague caused by the plague bacterium (''Yersinia pestis''). One to seven days after exposure to the bacteria, flu-like symptoms develop. These symptoms include fever, headaches, and vomiting, as well a ...
struck the city of London in what became known as the
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague of London, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. It happened within the centuries-long Second Pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics that origi ...
, the last epidemic of plague in that city. The book is told somewhat chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings, and with frequent digressions and repetitions.
Presented as an eyewitness account of the events at the time, it was written in the years just prior to the book's first publication in March 1722. Defoe was only five years old in 1665 when the Great Plague took place, and the book itself was published under the initials ''H. F.'' and is probably based on the journals of Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, who, like 'H. F.', was a
saddle
The saddle is a supportive structure for a rider of an animal, fastened to an animal's back by a girth. The most common type is equestrian. However, specialized saddles have been created for oxen, camels and other animals. It is not kno ...
r who lived in the
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...
district of
East London
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...
.
In the book, Defoe goes to great pains to achieve an effect of
verisimilitude
In philosophy, verisimilitude (or truthlikeness) is the notion that some propositions are closer to being true than other propositions. The problem of verisimilitude is the problem of articulating what it takes for one false theory to be closer ...
, identifying specific neighbourhoods, streets, and even houses in which events took place. Additionally, it 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
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
. Defoe's account, which appears to include much research, is far more systematic and detailed than Pepys's first-person account.
Classification
How the ''Journal'' is to be classified has been disputed. It was initially presented and read as a work of nonfiction,
but by the 1780s the work's fictional status was accepted. Debate continued as to whether Defoe could be regarded as the work's author rather than merely its editor.
Edward Wedlake Brayley wrote in 1835 that the ''Journal'' is "emphatically, not a fiction, not based on fiction ... great injustice is done to
efoe'smemory so to represent it." Brayley takes pains to compare Defoe's account with known ''bona fide'' accounts such as ''
Loimologia
''Loimologia, or, an historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665, With precautionary Directions against the like Contagion'' is a treatise by Dr. Nathaniel Hodges (1629–1688), originally published in London in Latin (''Loimologia, s ...
'' by
Dr. Nathaniel Hodges (1672), the diary of
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
, and
Thomas Vincent's ''God's Terrible Voice in the City by Plague and Fire'' (1667), as well as primary sources.
This view was also held by Watson Nicholson – writing in 1919 – who argued that "there is not one single statement in the ''Journal'', pertinent to the history of the Great Plague in London, that has not been verified during the course of this investigation," and "we are compelled to class the ''Journal of the Plague Year'' with authentic histories." It is, according to Nicholson, "a faithful record of historical facts ...
ndwas so intended by the author."
At least one modern literary critic,
Frank Bastian
Frank O. Bastian is an American medical doctor and neuropathologist, who previously worked at Louisiana State University, moved to a university in New Orleans
in 2019. He specializes in the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), which ...
, has agreed that "the invented detail is ... small and inessential" and that the ''Journal'' "stands closer to our idea of history than to that of fiction", and that "any doubts that remain whether to label it "fiction" or "history" arise from the ambiguities inherent in those words."
Other literary critics have argued that the work should be regarded as a work of imaginative fiction, and thus can justifiably be described as an "historical novel".
This view was held by Everett Zimmerman, who wrote that "It is the intensity of the focus on the narrator that makes ''A Journal of the Plague Year'' more like a novel than like ... history." Indeed, Defoe's use of the narrator "H.F.", and his initial presentation of the ''Journal'' as being the recollections of an eye-witness to the plague, is the major sticking point for critics who consider it more of a "romance" – "one of the peculiar class of compositions which hovers between romance and history" as it was described by
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy' ...
– than a historical account.
Walter George Bell, a historian of the plague, noted that Defoe should not be considered to be a historian because he uses his sources uncritically.
Scott's somewhat ambiguous view of the nature of the ''Journal'' was shared by Defoe's first major biographer,
Walter Wilson, who wrote in ''Memoir of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe'' (1830) about it that "
efoehas contrived to mix up so much that is authentic with the fabrications of his own brain, that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other; and he has given the whole such a likeness to the dreadful original, as to confound the sceptic, and encircle him in his enchantments." In Wilson's view the work is an "alliance between history and fiction" in which one continually morphs into the other and back again. This view is shared by John Richetti who calls the ''Journal'' a type of "pseudohistory", a "thickly factual, even grossly truthful book" in which "the imagination ... flares up occasionally and dominates those facts."
These alternative conceptualisations of the ''Journal'' – as fiction, history, or history-cum-fiction – continue to exist.
Adaptations
![Great plague of london-1665](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Great_plague_of_london-1665.jpg)
*In 1945, the syndicated radio programme ''
The Weird Circle
''The Weird Circle'' was a syndicated radio drama series produced in New York and originally broadcast between 1943 and 1945.
Production background
The series was a Ziv Production, produced at RCA's New York studios and licensed by the Mutual ...
'' adapted the novel into a condensed 30-minute drama.
*The 1979 Mexican film ''
El Año de la Peste
EL, El or el may refer to:
Religion
* El (deity), a Semitic word for "God"
People
* EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer
* El DeBarge, music artist
* El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...
'' (''The Year of the Plague''), directed by Mexican director Felipe Cazals from a screenplay written by
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one ...
, was based on ''A Journal of the Plague Year''.
*The
Oscar
Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to:
People
* Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms.
* Oscar (Irish mythology), ...
-nominated 1999 German
stop motion
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
animated short film ''
Periwig Maker'' is based on ''A Journal of the Plague Year''.
*A 2016
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
play adapted the novel into a 60-minute drama.
''A Journal of the Plague Year'' also served as the initial inspiration for
Anthony Clarvoe
Anthony Clarvoe is an American playwright born in 1958.
Education and training
Princeton University, A.B. English, magna com laude, 1981 (studied with Daniel Seltzer, Michael Goldman, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Carol Rosen, Lawrence Danson)
Padua ...
's play ''The Living''.
In popular culture
References to the book's title have been made in
Michael D. O'Brien
Michael David O'Brien (born 1948) is a Canadian author, artist, and essayist and lecturer on faith and culture. Born in Ottawa, he is self-taught, without an academic background. He writes and speaks on Catholic themes and topics, and creates the ...
's 1999 novel ''Plague Journal'', where the narrator and main character chooses the title to describe the theme of the book (jokingly referring to himself as a modern-day Defoe) and
Norman Spinrad
Norman Richard Spinrad (born September 15, 1940) is an American science fiction author, essayist, and critic. His fiction has won the Prix Apollo and been nominated for numerous awards, including the Hugo Award and multiple Nebula Awards.
Pe ...
's 1995 ''Journals of the Plague Years'', a
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
novel about a sexually transmitted viral disease that cannot be defeated by vaccines, referencing how
AIDS
Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...
was in its earliest days known as
"the gay plague".
A comparison of plague-driven behavior described by Defoe and the Covid-19 crisis of 2020 is discussed in "Persistent Patterns of Behavior: Two Infectious Disease Outbreaks 350 Years Apart," an article in the journal ''
Economic Inquiry
''Economic Inquiry'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Western Economic Association International. The current editor-in-chief is Tim Salmon (Southern Methodist University). The journal was establishe ...
'', and also in a commentary in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
* Etext with facsimile page images: Defoe, Daniel. ''A Journal of the Plague Year.'' Printed for E. Nutt at the Royal-Exchange; J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane; A. Dodd without Temple Bar; and J. Graves in St. James's-Street, 1722
''Literature in Context: An Open Anthology''.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Journal Of The Plague Year, A
1722 novels
Novels by Daniel Defoe
Fictional diaries
Historical novels
Fiction set in 1665
British novels adapted into films
18th-century British novels
Novels about the second plague pandemic