A part of my self-education in the nature of plagues.

“I could dwell a great while upon the calamities of this dreadful time, and go on to describe the objects that appeared among us every day, the dreadful extravagances which the distraction of sick people drove them into; how the streets now began to be fuller of frightful objects, and families to be made even a terror to themselves. But after I have told you, as I have above, that one man, being tied in his bed, and finding no other way to deliver himself, set the bed on fire with his candle, which unhappily stood within his reach, and burnt himself in his bed; and how another, by the insufferable torment he bore, danced and sung naked in the streets, not knowing one ecstasy from another; I say, after I have mentioned these things, what can be added more? What can be said to represent the misery of these times more lively to the reader, or to give him a more perfect idea of a complicated distress?”

Being a superb account of the bubonic plague that struck London in 1665 the book is worth reading closely in 2020. It appears that the most efficacious method of dealing with an epidemic is self-isolation, that capable government is necessary to avert chaos, and that we today are fortunate to have modern medicine that has some hopes of moderating the effects and perhaps ending it. In the past it was simply an incomprehensible visitation that must, if possible, be born, without hope.

Although it contains some deeply disturbing events it was not written to be sensationalist or to titillate with horror, but to present useful lessons to those who would have similar experiences in the future.

The book is also well worth reading as an example of the evolution of English. It was written circa 1720 describing events in 1665 and it is in something resembling fairly closely our modern tongue, although the syntax is more elaborate. But if you read contemporary accounts from 1665, say Pepys for example, they are in quite a different language. So somewhere in that time span English went through a transformation that looks to me as great as that from say Robert Browning to Ernest Hemingway.

FINALLY! I fell asleep so many times reading this that it's a miracle I ever finished. That being said, it was quite an interesting book to read, especially during our very own pandemic.
This book is historical fiction, Daniel Defoe writing it in 1722 and having been only 5 years old during the 1665 plague outbreak. But Wikipedia tells me that it was well-researched and all the historical facts are right, and it's probably based on Defoe's uncle's journal account. The narrator is the KING of rabbit trails and run-on sentences. He also really likes to make charts of how many people died in different neighborhoods during different weeks of the outbreak. One of the charts lists hundreds of deaths over the course of two months from ailments such as "Fever" "Spotted Fever" and "Teeth".
There's one part where the narrator is mulling over ways of knowing whether someone has the plague when they themselves might even be unaware of it, and he says: "I have heard it was the opinion of others that it might be distinguished by the party's breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be seen by a microscope, of strange, monstrous, and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents, and devils, horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truth of, and we had no microscopes at that time, as I remember, to make the experiment with." Micrographia had been published in January of 1665, and it "became the first scientific best-seller, inspiring a wide public interest in the new science of microscopy."
It was interesting to read about the similarities between our current measures to curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and their efforts to contain the plague.

Paraphrasing: those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it. Figured I’d go through this book during our present crisis. It’s pretty fascinating how certain things mirror exactly what is taking place currently. Namely the public’s insistence on returning to “normal” too early and suffering a backlash. However, the style is a bit like reading actuarial tables and documents mixed with personal stories of hearsay, as opposed to a narrative “journal” of someone living during The Black Death.

Prior to 2020 if I had read this I think it would have been a 3/4 star book for me. It is written in a running stream of conscious style that has no chapters and very few natural places to stop, often giving you the jolting feeling of picking back up in the middle of a thought. (if you find this style difficult to read, audiobook really suites itself to this, and it's a good one.) However having been through 2020 and a global pandemic, this book which was written in 1722 about 1655 is so familiar to me. Approaches to a pandemic that have not changed (social distancing, staying 'locked in' at home, monitoring of death rates, everyone is affected, your emotions are the same, etc. 400 years later and while we understand the science more and have a vaccine it just shows how very little human nature changes. What struck me was Daniels account (could be fictional) of people fleeing London against all the rules and spreading this into the country, people getting used to the death that once it starts to lower going back out and creating new spikes, the huge mass graves and the desperation of people attaching themselves to phony science (DT Bleach), religions or mystics and the almost completely removed Royal or poor centralized government guidance. With rules set by local areas ... deja vu? Now, this is written as a mixture of fact and fiction (stories retold by family) intertwined with actual statistical research and personal analysis but this is so similar to our current experience I absolutely feel this is more fact than fiction. Great Book!

I think this must be the ur-text for all futuristic dystopian post-apocalyptic novels. I thought it was non-fiction until I learned more about Daniel Defoe. He was five when the plague struck London in 1665, and his book was published in 1722. That makes it technically historical fiction. Much of the book is based on the experiences of Defoe's uncle. Early critics were also unclear how to classify it. Some considered it nonfiction, with Defoe as the editor of his uncle's memoirs. Some put it definitely in the fiction camp because of the structure and coherence of the work as compared to other accounts such as Pepys' diary.

It is a harrowing read. At the time of writing, germs hadn't been invented, so it was a complete mystery what caused the plague. It came out of nowhere, blazed a trail of death and destruction, and then stopped. All for no discernible reason. Some people got sick, some didn't. Some died, some recovered. No pattern to the progress, and it all appeared random. The narrator did nothing different from those who lived and those who died. He was lucky.

One of the most interesting sections of the book for me was the economic analysis close to the end of the account. Because of the social disruption and massive loss of management, labor and consumers, businesses failed. Ironically, what brought the economy out of the mess was another disaster—the great fire. Because of the destruction caused by the fire, there was a huge demand for construction and goods to replace what was lost. England finally righted itself and carried on.

Of all the books by Defoe I've read (Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year, and Moll Flanders) I like this the best.

‏دنیل دفو در «روزنوشت سال طاعونی»  آورده که در ۱۶۶۴، مقامات محلی در بعضی مناطق لندن، با ثبت بیماری‌های دیگر یا امراض ساختگی به عنوان علت مرگ، سعی می‌کردند شمار تلفات طاعون را از آنچه که هست پایین‌تر نشان دهند.
‏«از رمان‌ها می‌آموزیم واکنش همیشگی مردم در برابر همه‌گیری‌ها این بوده: پخش شایعات و اطلاعات نادرست، و معرفی بیماری به عنوان چیزی که منشأ خارجی دارد و نتیجۀ مقاصد شرورانه و شیطانی است.»


برای من کتاب فوق‌العاده جذابی بود. خواندن این کتاب مخصوصاً امروزه که یک همه‌گیری را از سر گذراندیم بسیار جالب توجه خواهد بود. شباهت‌های بسیاری میان روزگار شیوع طاعون با اوضاع و احوال خودمان در زمان همه‌گیری کرونا وجود داشت که باعث مبهوت شدن من شد بطوری که کاملا یاد این جمله کلیشه‌ای افتادم که تاریخ تکرار میشود. امیدوارم شما هم لذت ببرید.

Time is a flat circle

"It is true people used all possible precaution. When any one bought a joint of meat in the market they would not take it off the butcher's hand, but took it off the hooks themselves. On the other hand, the butcher would not touch the money, but have it put into a pot full of vinegar, which he kept for that purpose."

...

"They carried bottles of scents and perfumes in their hands, and all the means that could be used were used, but then the poor could not do even these things, and they went at all hazards."

...

"All the plays and interludes which, after the manner of the French Court, had been set up, and began to increase among us, were forbid to act; the gaming-tables, public dancing-rooms, and music-houses, which multiplied and began to debauch the manners of the people, were shut up and suppressed; and the jack-puddings, merry-andrews, puppet-shows, rope-dancers, and such-like doings, which had bewitched the poor common people, shut up their shops, finding indeed no trade; for the minds of the people were agitated with other things, and a kind of sadness and horror at these things sat upon the countenances even of the common people."

...

"Plague defied all medicines; the very physicians were seized with it, with their preservatives in their mouths; and men went about prescribing to others and telling them what to do till the tokens were upon them, and they dropped down dead, destroyed by that very enemy they directed others to oppose."

Es una lectura muy interesante.
Lo primero que hay que decir es que si alguien cree que va a leer una novela, que se lo quite de la mente. Este libro es más bien una crónica de ficción (escrita en el XVIII nada menos... un precursor de Truman Capote, salvando las distancias obviamente) de lo que vivió la población de Londres durante la terrible epidemia de la peste de 1665, que masacró a gran parte de su población.
Empecé a leer el libro a finales de 2020, en plena pandemia, y aunque me estaba gustando, las similitudes con lo que estamos viviendo y el momento emocional en el que me encontraba, me hicieron aparcar durante un tiempo su lectura. La retomé hace poco (aun estando en pandemia, pero estando yo psicológicamente más fuerte) y la verdad es que me ha gustado mucho leerlo.
Lo primero que debo decir es que parece mentira que realmente se trate de un relato ficcionado, aunque basado en hechos reales.
Ciertamente parece como si Defoe hubiera vivido, visto y oido todo lo que nos cuenta a través de los ojos de este protagonista que hace más de mero narrador, que de eje central de la historia (de hecho, la verdadera protagonista de esta historia es la población de Londres, en general; no hay un sujeto determinado al que sigamos sus pasos, aunque de vez en cuando se nos den pinceladas de lo que iba viviendo el narrador, que se cree inspirado en el tío del escritor). Defoe vivió esa epidemia, pero era un niño de tan solo 5 años cuando sucedió, por lo que los hechos que se lanzó a contar, 57 años después, se basan más en la extraordinaria e ingente labor de documentación que realizó (ahí se nota su mano de periodista), que en haberlos vivido de primera mano. Todo ello sin olvidar que escribió este libro en 1722... ¡1722!. Vamos, que los medios para documentarse no son los que tenemos en pleno s. XXI
Y otra cosa que me ha fascinado es la cantidad de paralelismos y similitudes que existen entre la epidemia de esa época, y la pandemia que estamos sufriendo ahora mismo todos nosotros: no solo en cuanto a medidas adoptadas, sino también respecto de las reacciones de la gente al vivir una situación tan extrema como la que estamos padeciendo.
Obviamente hay diferencias: ahora la ciencia ha progresado mucho más, y la medicina ha tenido una capacidad de reacción inexistente en aquel entonces. Pero lo demás... la crisis económica brutal derivada de la epidemia, los confinamientos, las resistencias a los confinamientos, la necesidad de adoptar mediddas sociales para evitar que la gente se muriera de hambre, "las segundas olas", la existencia de agentes de desinformación, de curanderismo aprovechado, los listados semanales de fallecimientos... me ha resultado brutal el impacto al ver tantas similitudes.
Pese a que justamente por eso tuve que hacer un "stop" en un momento dado, en aras de mi salud mental (ya que por motivos profesionales me ha tocado vivir bastante de cerca la gestión de la pandemia, en mi caso, de servicios sociales para personas con discapacidad), en realidad agradezco haber leído este libro ahora, y no antes de pasar por este trance.
Si lo hubiera leído antes de 2020, muchas de las reacciones las habría achacado a esa época histórica, a la ignorancia y falta de formación de la gente, o a que había otra mentalidad. Y resulta que no: que en el fondo no somos tan distintos de las personas del s. XVI, ni hemos evolucionado tanto. Y además me ha resultado muchísimo más sencillo entenderlos y empatizar con ellos.
En definitiva, una lectura curiosa e interesante, que se ve algo lastrada por el estilo narrativo de Defoe, que presenta muchas reiteraciones, y muchas idas y venidas contando las anécdotas, sin que siga una línea temporal ordenada, lo que provoca que en ocasiones algunos pasajes del libro se te hagan alf¡go pesados y redundantes.

"A plague is a formidable enemy, and is armed with terrors that every man is not sufficiently fortified to resist or prepared to stand the shock against."

This is how Defoe describes the plague that sweeps London in 1665 and kills thousands of its inhabitants. He chronicles a city's journey that in many ways is his. It begins with the author's dilemma as a merchant living in London when the Black Death comes (again) and devastates the city. As he lingers, weighing his options and choices - leave or stay? keep the business running or not? - he witnesses first-hand the terror of the "distemper".

Reading the author's documentation of the plague is like reading the news of today about the Covid-19 pandemic. The parallels between the two periods are so apparent it's spooky. The plague in this journal also begins in December and on to the following year. Defoe writes of people fleeing, businesses closing, infection spreading because of ignorance and poverty, number of death rising each day, classes dividing, superstitions reigning over rationality and people passing on the plague to others by ignoring measures discovered earlier to be good preventive actions (because it keeps them from professing their faith and beliefs).

"...they would go unconcerned into infected places and converse with infected persons, by which means they died at the rate of ten or fifteen thousand a week..."

At least, in this dire situation, most of the leaders appear to be of one mind about the plague, unlike some of the leaders of today. Their decisions are guided by the "science" of the times. There is strict quarantine. Many people are hired and mobilized to search and visit infected households. Mass gatherings and places where people gathered are closed and/or suspended. People are ordered to be confined to their homes if a household member becomes sick.

Defoe plays both observer and participant in his own chronicle. He writes firsthand accounts of what the plague can do to a civilized and hierarchical society. His accounts are heartbreaking, terrifying, and yet embracing of life and hope as the distemper blazes through the city with no regard whatsoever for wealth, power, age and gender.

Defoe also gives accounts of stories of recoveries, charities and small triumphs that make those left behind rally and persevere. He even proposes the idea of social distancing and gathering in "small bodies" to prevent the spreading of the plague!

The ending of his chronicle is bittersweet. He laments the deaths, and yet he finds joy in being alive and surviving the plague.

"A dreadful plague in London was
In the year sixty-five,
Which swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive! "

This is grim but strangely gripping, almost in spite of its author. First I had to try and remember that this is so early, among the earliest of the many claims of earliest novels -- that's hard enough. Written decades after the events it is describing, it's still quetsioned how much of it is based on Daniel Defoe's uncle's diary (he himself was 5 at the time he describes in such detail), how much is historical research, how much is 'novel'. It's strangely removed yet at the same time close enough to be fairly terrifying. Some claim it as part of the psychogeography tradition, an early example of a literary mapping of London, and I confess that is what I liked the most. The street by street, parish by parish descriptions, the sense of all London reading the death lists, waiting, watching the plague move from West to East and South but all the while hoping it wouldn't reach them. Getting some sense of what these times were like, how they were lived so far removed from imagination and Hollywood's occasional depictions. It's hard to believe that it all started only a short distance from where I work every day in Holborn.

I haven't read much beyond wikipedia and short descriptions, but what bothered me most was trying to decide if there is any touch of irony in this or if it is written straight faced. I just couldn't tell. It's horrifying however, when you don't identify with the rich but with the poor. He rails against the thievery, the lengths to which the well-off had to go when fleeing the city to protect their property--there is so much here about protecting property. So damn much. Yet he himself lists the multiple professions, the thousands that lost all work and hope of sustenance when the plague hit London. The many families who fled the cities, firing their servants and turning them out of their homes penniless and with nowhere to go.

He writes at one point of the plague as a kind of deliverance, how it:

carried off in that time thirty or forty thousand of these very poor people which, had they been left, would certainly have been an insufferable burden by their poverty; that is to say, the whole city could not have supported the expense of them, or have provided food for them; and they would in time have even been driven to the necessity of plundering either the city itself or the country adjacent, to have subsisted themselves...

In fact, it is extremely noticeable that all of the much vaunted charity of the city and 'gentlemen' of the country is primarily a measure to stop mass starvation resulting in rebellion and theft. Personally, I was angry enough at it that I was hoping for a little more pillage, for some distribution of the high life in this time of horror, especially as he describes the frightful conditions under which people lived. Their desperation is visible in the number of people willing to risk their lives for the small pay offered them to nurse the sick and watch at their doors and dig the graves and collect and bury the dead.

While praising London's government for running the city well through it all, Defoe blames the poor for spreading the plague, for not remaining shut up in their houses like the wealthy, waiting out the infection:

But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor. They went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employment they pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and liable to infection...

As though people seek out such employment when they don't need to eat. There is also a curious interlude when he reproaches some men getting drunk in a pub and laughing at those praying and grieving. He tells them to repent, to learn from his own behaviour, and tells them he is saved by God...As I say, almost over the top enough that it could be stab at some critique of the religious and the rich, but I have a feeling it's probably not, or not critical enough. Though it has contradictory opinions in it to fill another book sorting them all out.

Yep... Defoe's returns continue to diminish. This reminds me of Dostoevsky's 'House of the Dead,' since both books are absolutely riveting for the first 100 pages or so: you get an immediate impression of what it's like to live in a plague-ridden London (or Russian prison); you get drawn in by the odd 'life is stranger than fiction' moment, but then, before you know it, you're reading exactly the same thing two or even three times for no particular reason other than the narrator's inability to revise his own work. If you know much about the way plague was treated by the early moderns, you won't be surprised by too much here.

This penguin edition has some things going for it, starting with an amazing cover illustration and ending with Anthony Burgess' old introduction which is now an appendix. I suspect that's there because Burgess does what an introducer ought to do: describes a bit about Defoe's life and times, a bit about the book you're about to read, and a very slight interpretation of that book (here: 'can we preserve the societies we build?') The editor of this volume, on the other hand, gives us a semi-rapturous 'analysis' of Defoe's use of 'place' in the book, which sounds interesting until you read the book and realize that it's utterly tendentious.

Literary fashion is an odd beast- wouldn't it have made more sense to redo Roxana than to redo this?

It was a really bad idea to choose an audiobook for this novel. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read in a traditional way. I was often bored. And it wasn't a lector's fault. The structure of the book is simply not suitable for an audiobook.

Nonetheless, I did find many interesting observations. Some of them were disturbingly similar to our current global situation with a pandemic.