10 h 36 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What makes a man stay when plague spreads through his city and others flee?
London, 1665. Bubonic plague spreads, and H. F., a saddler near Aldgate, faces a hard choice: leave or stay. He stays. As wealthy Londoners depart and deaths rise, he watches the streets, weighs rumours, and argues with himself about duty, faith, and fear.
In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe presents a fictional memoir filled with weekly death lists, city orders, and survivors’ stories. This calm account brings you close to a city under strain. Infected houses are shut up, desperate people seek protection, and the poor face dangers that wealth can help others escape.
What you’ll discover
- A witness who stays Follow H. F. as he observes a frightened city while questioning his own choices.
- Fear written in numbers See how weekly lists of the dead give shape to a spreading terror.
- Protection with a cruel edge Consider what happens when city orders turn infected homes into places of confinement.
- Desperation and false hope Encounter the quacks and false prophets who feed on people’s need for safety.
- Unequal suffering, human help Discover small human scenes where the burden falls hardest on the poor, yet some offer help.
Is it for you?
This book suits readers who like vivid history, true to life in detail, and anyone who has lived through an epidemic and wants to see old fears in a new light. If you want a tight plot with a hero and a villain, you may find it less suited.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Rumours of plague creep toward London
- Staying or fleeing is a hard choice
- Numbers tell what fear cannot
- Locking up the sick brings cruelty
- Fear feeds quacks and false prophets
- The dead fill pits and streets
- The poor suffer most, yet some help
- The plague ebbs, and people grow careless
- A blend of fact and fiction that lasts
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Journal de l’année de la peste
by Daniel Defoe· 1722
A saddler records life in London as plague spreads.
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Language: Français
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
Rumours of plague creep toward London
The book opens in the autumn of 1664, when H. F. hears talk of plague in Holland. The city had suffered plague before, and everyone knew the signs. Then come reports of a few deaths in the parish of St Giles in the Fields, on the western side of London, among the poor. People hope it is a small matter that will fade with the winter.
H. F. is careful about how the disease travels. He says it probably came to England in goods from Holland, which had them from the Levant. He admits that nobody can be sure. This habit of weighing what is known against what is guessed runs through the whole book, and it gives the narrator his air of honesty.
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The author
Daniel Defoe
1660–1731 · English novelist and journalist
Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, and journalist. He was born in London in 1660 and died there in 1731. He wrote Robinson Crusoe and The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Colonel Jack appeared in 1722.
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What is A Journal of the Plague Year about?
It describes the Great Plague of London in 1665 through a narrator called H. F., a saddler who stays in the city. He records the deaths, the rules, the rumours, and the suffering of ordinary people.
Is A Journal of the Plague Year a true story?
Not strictly. Defoe published it in 1722 as fiction in the form of a memoir. He was a small child in 1665, but he drew on real records, bills of mortality, and survivor accounts.
Who is H. F. in A Journal of the Plague Year?
H. F. is the narrator, a saddler who lives near Aldgate. Many scholars think the initials may point to Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, though the book never says so. He watches events and weighs what he sees.
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