Al-Warraq Library does not host book files; it takes you to the copy at the original source. Public-domain status differs from country to country, so check the law where you live before downloading or republishing the book. Do you hold rights in this work? Request its removal
In 1665 the Great Plague killed perhaps a hundred thousand people in London. This book is presented as the memoir of a saddler, known only by the initials H…
In 1665 the Great Plague killed perhaps a hundred thousand people in London. This book is presented as the memoir of a saddler, known only by the initials H. F., who stays in the city while the rich flee, and walks its emptying streets. He records the weekly bills of mortality, houses shut up with their sick families inside and a red cross on the door, the dead-carts and plague pits, quacks selling useless cures, and moments of courage, panic and cruelty.
Context and significance
Daniel Defoe was only about five during the plague, and he published the book in 1722, when Londoners feared that a plague then raging in Marseille would reach them. It mixes real records with invented scenes so skilfully that it was long read as true history, and it found many new readers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Read Robinson Crusoe, and see Defoe's life.
About the author
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) was the son of a London butcher, became a merchant, went bankrupt more than once and turned to writing pamphlets. In 1703 he was put in the pillory for a satire on religious intolerance, and he later worked as a secret agent for the government in Scotland.
He was nearly sixty when he published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, and in the next few years he wrote Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year. He wrote hundreds of works in all, and is often called one of the fathers of the English novel.