I think if I had read A Journal of the Plague Year prior to 2020, I may have found the story a bit difficult to follow and maybe even a bit dull with it's attention to detail, death lists. laws and regulations. (See Nick @One Catholic Life who read this in 2017 and said, 'Not a bad read, but not something that I plan on rereading again'). However, reading it whilst in the middle of an actual pandemic, has been another experience entirely!
Like my reading of Camus, I was particularly fascinated by the thoughts and feelings and actions of other people throughout history, in coping with plague events.

Once again, it is all there, for us to see (and learn from), if only we would look.

Everything we are going through right now, has been gone through before. The people just wore different clothes!

With all our wonderful advances in technology and science, we still make the same erroneous assumptions, the same mistakes are made and we go through the same psychological trauma.

Happily, the same causes for celebration and hope also reoccur with every plague. The hero helpers, the medical staff, and the carers. The law makers who take the time to get it right, who regulate for the common good yet find a way to act humanely and kindly to individuals, the regular folk who do they right things and make personal sacrifices for the greater good. Every time, there are more of these than of the others who rebel, deny or ignore.

My reading of A Journal of the Plague Year was about finding the common experiences.

The rather shambolic structure of the book, can be seen to reflect the chaotic nature of the plague. The fears, the rumours and the disbelief that spread, as the plague approached, the changing laws and (dis)information as the first cases were diagnosed, the grief, loss and suffering that ebbed and flowed with hope and relief at different times. Defoe describes it all, in great detail, several times!

A lot of the rambling style is taken up with the numbers game.

Just as we watch the daily news and listen to regular updates about how many people were tested today, how many positive cases, how many deaths, how do we compare to other states and other countries, in 1665, they had the Parish Bills posted on the local church board and Bills of Mortality. Defoe tracked the Plague through the various boroughs and counties of England and he also listed the various trades and jobs adversely affected by the Plague.
Full review here - http://bronasbooks.blogspot.com/2020/...

Target audience: common people, anyone who wants to find information about the plague, the beliefs and the lifestyle of the Londoners of the year 1666.

About the author: Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Samuel Richardson, and is among the founders of the English novel. He was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.


Structure of the book: This edition has 289 pages, and the book is not divided in parts, chapters or points.

Overview: Although it is considered to be a work of fiction, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year from 1722 is based on a solid documentation and describes in great detail the physical and mental effects the plague had had upon the citizens. This book is somehow a clear proof that reality always beats fiction. There is no comparison, for example, between modern-day movies or books about zombie apocalypses and the city of London of the year 1666. So much horror, so much cruelty, so much death and so much savagery; at a certain moment I almost had the feeling those things never happened in reality. And yet they did.
Of all, I especially liked how Defoe depicted the psychological impact of the plague upon the citizens, a thing missing from modern-day productions. Everywhere reigned concern and the cries were heard continuously. Despair and fear altered human reason, bringing the population to a state of semi-savagery. The stench reminded those alive that death was one step away and everyone wondered when his turn would come. And I'll end this overview with a quote:
Next to these public things were the dreams of old women; or, I should say, the interpretation of old women upon other people’s dreams; and these put abundance of people even out of their wits. Some heard voices warning them to be gone, for that there would be such a plague in London so that the living would not be able to bury the dead; others saw apparitions in the air, and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared; but the imagination of the people was really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if they who were poring continually at the clouds, saw shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapour.


Strong points: A Journal of the Plague Year is one of my favorite books, and for a good reason. Fascinating, cruel, interesting, many details but not boring, not too long or too short. Easy to read and captivating.

Weak points: I felt like the pace of the book changed towards the end, as if the narration becomes less interesting as the effects and the strength of the plague are diminishing. Moreover, I believe that many tables and statistics about deaths and casualties could have been skipped by the author. In any case, a 5-star book.

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not much to say about this apart from the fact that it took two months to read being very telling lol. i knew this would be a dense read going in but i was hoping for more descriptive anecdotes and atmosphere-building that would make me feel like i was there.
i was so ready for a stomach churning account of sordid sights and smells but instead it was endless pages of numbers and figures being rattled off. still an interesting insight to what the plague was like but the very clinical approach makes for a tiresome read.

Although Defoe was only 6 at the time of the events of the book (the Black Death devastating London), it was written as if it were a first person account. However, with the exception of only a couple of segments that could actually be considered "narrative", the entire book was pretty much just a compilation of actuarial tables detailing the weekly number of casualties by parish. And yep, that's just as boring as it sounds.