I am so happy to be done with this book.

It was a good supposed-secondhand account of the Plague that ravaged London in 1665. It was interesting to hear about the daily life of 17th century Londoners. But there were no chapters or sections or even breaks and and it was quite repetitive.

If I were a historian I’m sure this novel would be of great importance, the observations seem quite objective even though it’s riddled with spiritual faith which we know now doesn’t have much to do with pandemics (regardless if God is real or not, I doubt he cares much about what happens to the human germ lol).

As an armchair-philosopher I can appreciate the first person POV style of writing, and I give the narrator credit for being intelligent. The writing style is not at all like the third person which can be thought of as an omnipotent being and is allowed to be judged cruelly (in my view, lol). First person accounts allow for epistemological errors and biased (and sometimes blatantly wrong) viewpoints. If I were more interested in that time and place and subject I would most likely love the subject matter. But I’m not interested in all accounts.

Not for the faint hearted as this was solid text on a gruelling subject. Seeing as this was written some decades after the events I wonder why the great fire was not mentioned - maybe the answer lies in the fact that DeFoe and his contempories did not know that the fire cleansed the area. *shrug* What do you think?

And so it was that the plague came into London, by the mercy of God, and I thought I would remain in the city despite the plague, for since God made it, I could not escape it if he meant me to perish from it, viz. when that brick fell off the chimney and onto my foot, which I was loathe to move, for since God sent the brick, it would do me no good to move my foot and so avoid his will.

But I would say the best way to avoid the plague and to survive would be to leave the city, as many did, when the signs of the plague came, for in this way, many survived who would not have, by the grace of God, for though God created the plague, which cannot be hoped to be avoided, we are no Mahometans who believe our lives predetermined.

But, the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air.

I rejoice that God sent this plague to kill so many unpleasant people, viz. heathens and unbelievers and thieves and the greedy, for surely God sent the plague for this purpose, and would not have allowed to live any who so deserved death, viz heathens, unbelievers, thieves, and the greedy.

Though it was difficult to go to church, for so many of the priests had died, and so many of those who came in and prayed for their lives, and their families lives, which was the best thing they could do, even though the plague travels on the breath and to be in church is very dangerous for this reason, doubtless God spared the good people who deserved life, viz. kind and gentle people.

Now I must tell you a sad story about a man who I knew to be extremely generous and pious, and whose wife was chaste and always kind, and who had two infant children. The children both died of the plague, followed by the wife, who did not even know she had it, and then he was driven to madness by the plague and ran through the streets naked and babbling, before he also died. I feel it was necessary to relate this story, for there are many such like it, and though I cannot declare it's veracity myself, it seems so likely that I must needs include it here, viz. it is a worthy story.

And I should say that the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air.

There are some physicians who say that the disease can be detected by taking a microscope to the exhalation of a victim, whereupon will be seen many tiny monsters, viz. dragons, snakes, and devils, and that these enter the blood and lay many eggs which pass the disease along, but I think this most ridiculous and unlikely, and only include it because some have said it.

Some poor, ignorant folks went to fortune tellers or other such liars and payed monies to have certain rituals performed or symbols given which were meant to protect them, viz. pins or necklaces said to be good luck or proof against disease, which was most foolish and it is a shame that such folk took advantage of the poor in this way.

Luckily, most of the poor took faith in the church, wearing crosses or invoking saints and praying each day and night to be spared, which I am certain the greater part were.

But I should not end this account without first speaking of a certain crime: the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air.

DIARIO DEL AÑO DE LA PESTE Daniel defoe conocido por escribir Robinson Crusoe.
AHORA: imagina gente saltando por la ventana de sus casa clausurada o, directamente a los fosos aún con vida. Imagina chillidos desgarrados de dolor durante día y noche de gente desesperada que acaban de contemplar la muerte. Imagina bebes encontrados mamando aún de la teta de un cadáver, ingiriendo veneno directo no por mucho mas. Imagina un hombre que llevado por el carro de la muerte susurra y pregunta si ya está muerto. La verdad que es difícil...
La gran peste de Londres, que duró de 1665 a 1666, fue la última epidemia de peste bubónica en Inglaterra. Sucedió en el contexto de la segunda pandemia de peste bubónica en Europa, un período de epidemias intermitentes originadas en China en la década de 1330 —en lo que se conoce como la peste negra— y que duró hasta 1750.
La epidemia mató aproximadamente 100 000 personas, casi una cuarta parte de la población de Londres, en dieciocho meses. La peste es causada por la bacteria Yersinia pestis, que generalmente se transmite a través de la picadura de una pulga de rata infectada.

http://ancazaharia.ro/2022/01/jurnal-...

Am Jurnal din Anul Ciumei de la apariția lui din 2020 la editura ART, în colecția cărți cult, dar l-am ocolit până acum pentru că nu eram convinsă că poate să-mi fie cu adevărat utilă o carte care face referire la epidemia de ciumă din 1665, din Londra. M-am apucat de cartea lui Defoe abia după ce mi-a spus un prieten că e copie aproape perfectă a atitudinilor pe care am avut cu toții ocazia să le vedem, în noi sau în cei din jur, odată cu pandemia pe care încă o traversăm căutând soluții și respectând reguli sau, după caz, o negăm.

In the crowded unhealthy unclean foul, pest dominated filthy city of London the Black Plague breaks out in 1665, no surprise it had occurred before in fact just a few years previously but this escalates, felling some say 100,000 people who never rise again. Daniel Defoe the inventor of the English language novel (Robinson Crusoe, 1719) yet because of his earlier employment, was more a journalist than a novelist, writes a memoir of this catastrophe almost sixty years later. The author was only five -years old at the time, but his Uncle Henry Foe ( Defoe added De, to make himself seem a gentleman, his father was a butcher) takes this eyewitness account from this relative's journal, the narrator is only described as H.F. The alarmed inhabitants of the city mostly flee for their lives the rich first, King Charles the Second to Oxford, others to the nearby countryside the poor survive in the woods, old ruined shacks or in tents even outside, the locals don't help at first afraid to get sick too. Many refugees starve to death, some succumb to the unmerciful disease the very brave stay in London those that work for the city government, the least well off remain also nowhere to go the hardest hit and die frequently in the streets, their minds inflamed by illness babbling words incomprehensible before dropping to the ground. The Dead- Carts pick up the victims and bury them in deep holes, mass graves are quickly covered and another one dug for the next batch. The narrator's brother had urged him to get out of town like him, but H.F. had a store to run , a house to take care of with servants and warehouses full of his goods; how could he? Still his sister would welcome him, she lived faraway in a different city. The curious yet frightened man roams the streets, seeing the dead scattered everywhere, hearing unearthly screams from ill women in their homes, windows opened, moans flowing from above dazed men in nightshirts cursing, groaning people asking God to save them why did he not leave? Whole families dying inside a house fathers, mothers, children, servants the stench of the bodies spreading to passersby they keep walking. Londoners afraid to come near strangers they believe are infected by their polluted air not knowing the diseased rats, and flees that bite them and the many citizens of the city are the real killers. Pitiful beggars abound asking for help, houses are shut with the owners inside either by the government, with the sick there or healthy ones trying to avoid the deadly plague by hiding . Vicious thieves break into the empty homes stealing all, not afraid of the danger so desperate the situation, nothing to lose thinking everybody is doomed. And the Dead-Carts continue to roll down the pestilent streets the drivers throwing the deceased in, filling it to the top until no more living humans are left? A splendid glance back to a depressing time with little medicine, more ignorance and superstitions that dominated the scene a mirror into yesteryear.

“A Journal of the Plague Year” was a perfect pandemic read. As I followed Defoe’s account of London during the plague, I couldn’t help but compare human behavior then and now and sometimes caught myself chuckling at how we scarcely changed at all over hundreds of years. What surprised me the most was how smart authorities and physicians were for the age when medicine wasn’t even closely as advanced as it is today. They quickly realized that to mitigate the plague, they needed to warn the public against congregating in big groups and leaving their houses for anything but necessities. Houses where cases were confirmed, were quickly shut up and guardsmen posted at the doors to prevent the sick people from leaving. But needless to say, even when the majority followed common sense guidelines, there were people who openly scoffed at them and went about their business as if death wasn’t virtually in the air, risking not only their lives but the lives of the others. In Defoe’s account, instances of selfishness are contrasted with inspiring moments of self-sacrifice; fear with bravery, and logic and narrow-mindedness and willful ignorance. It’s not only a fascinating historical read but also a remarkable study of human character. If you’re searching for a perfect pandemic read, I’d highly recommend this one.

A journal of the plague year is the recount of a bubonic plague outbreak in London in 1665. Despite the events in this journal occurring nearly 350 years ago, there is an astounding amount of parallels to draw from when compared with the recent pandemic.

This work is unique as it combines novel, journal, historical events and social observations into one book. The writing style is incredibly repetitive and can be dull to read at times due to it's repetition, but I suppose that was the writing style of the time. That being said it is still very readable.

I think there is a lot of value that can be extracted from this journal, for example it accurately recants the theory that the Great Fire of London ended the plague (it didn't). However, there are questions of legitimacy in other passages as this journal was created using material written by the author's uncle, as the author was only 5 years old at the time of the events written about. Some sections of the book are 5 star worthy, others are 1. Balances out to about a 3 stars.

Mi videoreseña: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNCr0...

Me ha encantado y no me sorprende la buena fama que tiene.

Es un relato fascinante e inmersivo que va dibujando el horror de lo que viene siendo una pandemia (la epidemia de peste que asoló londres en 1665) mediante la opinión de un supuesto testigo de los acontecimientos y decenas de pequeñas anécdotas que van conformando la narración. Es increible la capacidad de Defoe de hacerte creer que él estuvo allí, cuando es todo un producto de su imaginación, nutrido con el trabajo de otros y los rumores e historias que aún rondaban en la época en la que él vivía (unos 60 años tras los hechos).

Se observa el germen de lo que hoy conocemos como reportaje periodístico: la narración de los hechos incluyendo muchos detalles "de interés humano". Se diferencia, por supuesto, en el lenguaje (el vocabulario y estructura de las frases es diferente al uso moderno de la lengua) y en el pequeñísimo detalle de que se trata de un relato inventado, aunque basado en la realidad. De ahí que se considere una novela, aunque en su época se incluía dentro de los ensayos filosóficos donde los autores trataban de hablar sobre sus teorías y creencias con la intención de "educar" al pueblo, o, al menos, hacerle reflexionar sobre las realidades de la vida y el pensamiento.

Abstenerse hipocondriacos. Sin embargo, aquellos interesados en escribir novelas sobre apocalipsis zombis deberían leerlo para obtener datos y una visión en conjunto de los estragos de una pandemia entre la población.

Sin duda, un gran libro.

I understand that this is a book written before the conventions of a "novel" or a "memoir" or any other thing of that sort actually existed. So when Defoe was writing this book, he was just... well, writing. Because of that, the basic structure of the book contains only two set points; one - the plague begins; two - the plague ends.

Between these points chaos reigns supreme. Stories are written together and connected in an entirely associative manner, stories trail off and reappear several pages later, stories grow into huge incidents or just peter out.

Nevertheless, for the first half of the book, more or less, this isn't really a detriment, giving, as it does, the feel of a genuine diary. However, sad though it is to say, genuine diaries are, on the whole, rather boring affairs, and this book, just like the diary it purports to be, becomes, in its second half, quite unbearably dull.

It certainly has its merits as a depiction of what people had thought about plagues and epidemics in the 17th-18th centuries, how they handled the concept and what they did when no functioning system of public health or regulations, nor welfare and disaster relief, stood to help them in their need. It's sometimes horrifying, and sometimes banal, like life in general,and if it were a more structured, more varied bonk, it would be interesting all the way.

n  It was a very ill time to be sick in…n

My pandemic reading continues with this classic work about one of the worst diseases in European history: bubonic plague. Daniel Defoe wrote this account when the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction were looser. He freely mixes invention, hearsay, anecdote, and real statistics, in pursuit of a gripping yarn. Defoe himself was only a young boy when the Great Plague struck London, in 1664-6; but he writes the story in the person of a well-to-do, curious, if somewhat unimaginative burgher, with the initials “H.F.” The result is one of literature’s most enduring portraits of a city besieged by disease.

Though this account purports to be a “journal,” it is not written as a series of dated entries, but as one long scrawl. What is more, Defoe’s narrator is not the most orderly of writers, and frequently repeats himself or gets sidetracked. The book is, thus, rather slow and painful to read, since it lacks any conspicuous structure to grasp onto, but approaches a kind of bumbled stream-of-consciousness. Even so, there are so many memorable details and stories in this book that it is worth the time one spends with it.

The Great Plague carried off one fourth of London’s population—about 100,000 souls—and it was not even the worst outbreak of plague in the city. The original wave of the Black Death, in the middle ages, was undoubtedly worse. Still, losing a quarter of a city’s population is something that is difficult for most of us to even imagine. And when you consider that the Great Fire of London was quick on the plague’s heels, you come to the conclusion that this was not the best time to be a Londoner.

What is most striking about reading this book now is how familiar it is. The coronavirus is no bubonic plague, but it seems our reactions to disease have not come a long way. There are, of course, the scenes of desolation: empty streets and mass graves. The citizens anxiously read the statistics in the newspaper, to see if the numbers are trending upwards or downwards. And then there are the quacks and mountebanks, selling sham remedies and magical elixirs to the desperate. We also see the ways that disease affects the rich and the poor differently: the rich could afford to flee the city, while the poor faced disease and starvation. And the economic consequences were dreadful—shutting up business, leaving thousands unemployed, and halting commerce.

Medical science was entirely useless against the disease. Nowadays, we can effectively treat the plague with antibiotics (though the mortality rate is still 10%). But at the time, little could be done. Infection with the bacillus causes swollen lymph nodes—in the groin, armpits, and neck—called buboes, and it was believed that the swellings had to be punctured and drained. This likely did more harm than good, and in practice the plague doctors’ only useful purpose was to keep records of the dead.

Quite interesting to observe were the antique forms of social distancing (a term that of course did not exist) that the Londoners practiced. As now, people tried to avoid going out of their homes as much as possible, and if they did go out they tried to keep a distance from others and to avoid touching anything. Defoe describes people picking up their own meat at the butcher’s and dropping their money into a pan of vinegar to disinfect it. There was also state-mandated quarantining, as any house with an infection got “shut up”—meaning the inhabitants could not leave.

Ironically, though these measures would have been wise had the disease been viral, they made little sense for a disease communicated by rat fleas. (Defoe does mention, by the way, that the people put out rat poison—which probably helped more than all of the distancing.)

One more commonality is that the disease outlasted people’s patience and prudence. As soon as an abatement was observed in the weekly deaths, citizens rushed out to embrace each other and resume normal life, despite the warning of the town’s physicians. Not much has changed, after all.

So while not exactly pleasant to read, A Journal of the Plague Year is at least humbling for the contemporary reader, as it reminds us that perhaps we have not come so far as we thought. And it is also a timely reminder that, far from a novel and unpredictable event, the current crisis is one of many plagues that we have weathered in our time on this perilous globe.

I almost shelved this book multiple times, but I didn’t because I felt some weird duty to read it after having experienced life during the COVId pandemic.

The writing is dry and repetitive at times, but, in the end, it was an interesting read to me because it showed human behavior really hasn’t changed a lot over the centuries.