![]() ![]() It decimated the population, killing an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Londoners, almost a quarter of the total. The 1665 epidemic in London was the fourth that century and the last major outbreak in England. ![]() ![]() Outbreaks continued to flare up every few decades for three centuries. First arriving in Europe from Asia in 1347, it claimed a staggering 20 million lives in five years - or up to two-thirds of the population. The medieval world was no stranger to bubonic plague. Project Gutenberg, home to thousands of out-of-copyright editions of older literary works, reported over 40,000 downloads of the e-book in April alone, making it the fifth most popular item on the site. The book has now emerged from the shadows to which it had long been relegated. It is also a cautionary tale, with frequent exhortations to future generations urging them to avoid the missteps that, in Defoe’s opinion, made the calamity worse than it might otherwise have been. Published in 1722, it is a chilling, often graphic but always compassionate account of the yearlong epidemic that left tens of thousands dead. “Due Preparations for the Plague” was published in 1722 in tandem with “A Journal…” Image: OpenCulture “A Journal of the Plague Year,” Daniel Defoe’s short book about the 1665 outbreak in London of what is believed to have been bubonic plague, is never a comforting read it is even less so in these times of a global pandemic. ![]()
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