![]() ![]() When he wrote his book in 1722, he drew on historical records such as broadsides, medical pamphlets and the ‘Bills of Mortality’ published by local parish authorities, as well as the memories of his uncle Henry Foe, who remained in London during the plague, and whose initials ‘H.F.’ are given to Defoe’s narrator. Yet in reality, as Burgess correctly identifies, it is ‘a cunning work of art, a confidence trick of the imagination.’ĭefoe was only five years old when the plague broke out. Defoe presents his novel as a genuine book of memoirs, a detailed and intimate if sometimes rambling and digressive account of one man’s experience living in London throughout the ‘visitation’ that swept away an estimated 100,000 people - a fifth of the population of the city. ![]() ![]() One of the questions that Burgess grapples with is the relationship the Journal has with historical accuracy. His introduction is still available in the current Penguin Classics edition, and it remains a lively and thoughtful preparation for Defoe’s haunting description of the outbreak of plague that ravaged London in 1665. One of Anthony Burgess’s first commissions from Penguin Books was to write an introduction to Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1966 as part of the Penguin English Library. ![]()
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