A journal of the plague year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / by Daniel De Foe. Revised edition with historical notes by E. W. Brayley ... Also, some account of the great fire in London in 1666, by Gideon Harvey ... with an appendix containing the Earl of Clarendon's account of the fire. With illustrations on steel by George Cruikshank.

  • Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731.
Date:
[1881]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A journal of the plague year, or, Memorials of the great pestilence in London, in 1665 / by Daniel De Foe. Revised edition with historical notes by E. W. Brayley ... Also, some account of the great fire in London in 1666, by Gideon Harvey ... with an appendix containing the Earl of Clarendon's account of the fire. With illustrations on steel by George Cruikshank. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    INTRODUCTOEY OBSEEVATIONS. London, in former ages, has frequently sufPered from the ravages of Pestilence, and thousands and tens of thou- sands of the inhabitants have been swept by its virulence into one common grave. But at no period of our annals ■was the mortality so devastating as in the year 1665. It was then, indeed, that man withered like the grass and that his brief earthly existence became a fleeting shadow. Contagion was rife in all our streets, and so baleful were its effects, that the church-yards were not sufficiently capacious to receive the dead. It seemed for a while as though the brand of the avenging angel had been unloosed in judgment, and that the infected city was doomed to become' another Golgotha! The Journal of the Plague Year, attributed to De Foe, was originally published in the year 1772; and the question as to its genuineness and accuracy, as an account of that calamity, has given rise to much discussion. Like most of De Foe's works, it appeared without an author's name, but no one who is at all acquaiiited with the gene- ral characteristics of his writings, can, for a moment hesitate to agree with the voice of common fame, which assigns it to him. But the question then arises, as to what degree of credit is due to the Journal or to the circumstances Avhich it records; since De Foe was scarcely two years of age, when the Great Pestilence occurred which it affects so minutely to describe. His narrative,