L2L A Journal of the Plague Year (ft. Carol Andrews)

A Journal of the Plague Year

Daniel Defoe

Living through the misery and disruption are quite a trick, even if you are well. This week, Dr. Carol Andrews, associate professor emerita of literature, joins Leigh Rich and P. T. Bridgeport for a discussion of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Defoe was five or six years old when the plague hit London in 1665 and, therefore, only partly aware of it and its consequences. He constructed his Journal in 1722, using a variety of sources — one of which may have been his uncle, Henry Foe. Then, again, some of what he wrote was perhaps fiction. Thanks to an outbreak in Marseilles in 1721, the plague had again threatened London, making Defoe’s book a best seller.