Review: A Journal of the Plague Year

Hello and welcome back!

For those who don’t know me, my name is Arden Hall and I’m a bookstagrammer, Wattpad writer and almost a BookTuber (I deleted all my videos from years ago and have been planning my return for a while now).

In today’s post, I have prepared for you a review of my first finished read of 2019 – A Journal of the Plague by Daniel Defoe.

This is a full review, meaning that I’ll include spoilers (spoiler alert: it’s about the plague and people die). Don’t be alarmed, however. History is a pretty big spoiler in itself.

I’ll start by saying that I’ve listened to this book on Librivox, my favorite app for free audiobooks read by volunteers. It’s great if you want to listen to older books such as the classics or fairytales.

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Rating: 3/5



Background information:

The book was first published in 1722. It is believed that the author was too young to remember the plague as he was only five years old at the time of the Great Plague of London which struck during the years of 1665 and 1666 (the same year of the Great Fire of London). The book was published under the initials H. F. and it is assumed that it was based on the journals of Henry Foe, Daniel Defoe’s uncle.

Contents:

It should be said that each chapter is written around a certain topic. These topics range from the author’s own inner battle whether to desert his lodgings (something many people did) when the plague first announced its arrival to London and then moved onto the trade between countries during the times of these distempers.

Mostly the author talked about people’s experiences and dove into many of their stories from which he made certain points of his opinion clear. He often explained people’s reaction to the disease when it first made contact with the towns, the way many turned to or away from God, how the disease spread and people’s careless association with the infection. It was also talked of the disease’s terrible symptoms and how they were relieved, often unsuccessful. The towns disposed of the many bodies by burying them because it was believed that the fires only furthered the contagion. 

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Review: 

This is the third book I’ve read talking about the plague (first two being A Discourse On The Plague by Richard Mead and the other, my personal favorite, The Black Death: A History From Beginning to End by Henry Freeman) and I’ve enjoyed it.

It’s not my favorite one I’ve read, but it’s my second favorite out of the three. Mainly because the book isn’t just a researched work of historians but rather a storytelling of one man’s life during that horrible time.

I didn’t feel like its content was being stretched out or boring at all. Everything the owner of the journal has talked about usually concluded with a point or the reason why it was mentioned in the first place. I liked the details of the everyday life this book provided, the same with the numbers of the dead every month and which of those were of the plague.

It’s details such as those that made me want read the book in the first place because it was the true account of a person which lived in that frightful era.

But there’s also a reason why I rated it only 3 out of 5 stars. That is that some parts of the book failed to catch my interest and I happened to unintentionally zone out. The details of how London’s trade with the outside world came to a halt, the story of the travellers who have deserted their houses and failed to find a new place to reside or what some of the author’s neighbors have been doing was something that I could hardly get into.

I occasionally wanted to listen more about the author’s everyday life.

Read this book if:

You love history and are interested in reading about the plague.
If diseases interest you.
You want to read something out of your comfort zone.

[image error]Follow me on Instagram: @yabookprincess – posted on 03/01/2019



My next plans:

Book: A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
Audiobook: Words In Deep Blue by Cath Crowley

Connect with me:

Wattpad: ardenhall
Instagram: yabookprincess
Twitter: yabookprincess
E-mail: theardenhall@gmail.com