Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

Penny Pritchard (University of Hertfordshire)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1722

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Biography (literary)
Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

A Journal of the Plague Year

is unique among Defoe’s fictional works, not least because its narrative and structure are arranged around the unfolding historical events of London’s 1665 Great Plague. It could indeed be argued that

Plague Year’s

protagonist is not ‘H.F.’, the Aldgate saddler and Dissenter [q.v] who narrates the text, but is in fact London itself, manifested in the myriad portraits of its suffering inhabitants as they do battle with the epidemic. What is certain is that H.F. is an avid, indeed compulsive, chronicler of the horrors of the disease; his story is related in a direct, visually detailed and journalistic style that is immediately reminiscent of Defoe’s best works of non-fiction (see, for example,

The Storm

[1704] and

A True Relation of the Apparition of

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

728 words

Citation: Pritchard, Penny. "A Journal of the Plague Year". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4282, accessed 26 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback