A Journal of the Plague Year — Nicolette Bethel

Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year—by which he referred to the great plague of 1665—the last year in which the bubonic plague broke out in London (plague year conspiracists, beware selective dating) was one of my favourite books when I studied 18th century literature some thirty-five years ago.

In it, an unnamed narrator, whom we learn to call “the saddler”, provides what he calls a first-hand account of the Great Plague of London. On first glance, the book is what it says it is: an account of the plague year. But we realize by page 2 it’s actually a memoir, and as we read further (if we’re paying attention) we realize that it’s not even that. It’s fiction, rising (maybe) out of an assemblage of facts.

Or maybe it’s lies. We’re never too sure. There are tables and lists and first-hand accounts all through the book. But here’s the thing: the more “facts” the saddler lays out on the page, the more sure we become (as we continue through the book) is the more likely the facts are, in fact, fake. Some are impossible. All we do know is that the more definitive the saddler gets, the less likely what he says is to be true.

Sound familiar?

“...It seems that the Government had a true account of it, and several councils were held about ways to prevent it ... but all was kept very private.”

I’m going to be rereading this book as we move through our lockdown, as we move into the predicted surge of cases. I’ll post bits and pieces here as we go on. If you’ve never read it, go look it up. It’s fiction, yes. But it’s also uncannily true, the way literature, in its most imagined, is truer than anything we see on the news.

“From the hygienic comfort of the twentieth century, the terrible calamity which Defoe described with such accurate, vivid realism seems remote, an experience that can never be repeated. But such suffering can still visit mankind—the great influenza epidemic of 1919 killed far more people. The terror for Defoe’s London last in the awful concentration of the disease. In his pages a metropolis does before or eyes; the streets empty; grass grows where life reigned. A Journal of the Plague Year is a tale of horror, told by one of the great masters of realism.”
J. H. Plumb, Cambridge University, 1960
introduction to the Signet Edition of A Journal of the Plague Year