A Journal of the Plague Year

London, 1665. A saddler identified only as H.F. chooses to remain in the city as bubonic plague advances from the western parishes into crowded neighbourhoods on both sides of the Thames. He follows the weekly bills of mortality, observes houses marked and guarded under quarantine orders, visits burial grounds and records the flight of those able to leave while trade, employment and ordinary family life collapse around those who remain.

Published in 1722, the book is a historical reconstruction presented as eyewitness testimony. Defoe combines official statistics, civic regulations, remembered stories and invented encounters to examine fear, religious interpretation, fraud, charity and the unequal burden of epidemic disease. Its documentary surface gives the narrative unusual authority while repeatedly exposing how difficult it is to establish truth during a public catastrophe.