author - "Daniel Defoe"
Description
The Plague is a disease that has a long and tragic history alongside humanity’s development of tightly-packed cities. A Journal of a Plague Year is a first-person narrative account of London’s last great plague outbreak in 1665, which killed an estimated 100,000 people in just 18 months.
Though written in the first-person perspective by Daniel Defoe, he was only 5 years old during the outbreak. The initials at the end of the work, “H. F.,” suggest that Journal is based on accounts of Defoe’s uncle, Henry Foe.
This highly readable short novel is fascinating not just as a historical account, but in its description of how people reacted to a deadly disease that they understood to be contagious, but yet had no cure for. Defoe derides quack doctors who killed more than they saved, and then themselves succumbed to plague. He tells of people turning to religion; of people driven mad by the death around them and raving in the streets; of people fleeing to the country, and of others barricading themselves in their homes. The ways people reacted in 1665 could be the very same ways people might have reacted today to a mysterious, deadly, and highly contagious outbreak.
o fine enough: it is a hard matter to know the mistress from the maid by their dress; nay, very often the maid shall be much the finer of the two. Our woollen manufacture suffers much by this, for nothing but silks and satins will go down with our kitchen-wenches; to support which intolerable pride, they have insensibly raised their wages to such a height as was never known in any age or nation but this.
Let us trace this from the beginning, and suppose a person has a servant-maid sent him out of the country, at fifty shillings, or three pounds a year. The girl has scarce been a week, nay, a day in her service, but a committee of servant-wenches are appointed to examine her, who advise her to raise her wages, or give warning; to encourage her to which, the herb-woman, or chandler-woman, or some other old intelligencer, provides her a place of four or five pounds a year; this sets madam cock-a-hoop, and she thinks of nothing now but vails and high wages, and so gives warning from place to place, till sh
is eyes. He breathed hard. At last he said, "Dear Father in Heaven, I live. Thou hast saved me. I thank Thee."
VII
THE FIRST NIGHT ON LAND
"Where are my companions?" That was his first thought. He began to call and halloo: "Where are you?" "Come here!" But no one answered. Then he wished to see if anyone lived on the land, and he cried, "Is there no one here? Hello!" but all remained still.
All at once he drew himself together and shrank back. He heard a bush rustle and the thought came like a flash, "That is a wild animal that will pounce upon me and tear my flesh with his teeth and claws. How shall I save myself? Where shall I fly for safety? Where shall I turn? I have nothing but my clothes and my life saved from the water. All that I had the waves have swallowed up."
And then hunger and thirst began to trouble him. He had eaten nothing the whole day and the salt water had made him sick.
In the meantime the night had come on. Robinson was very tired. Everythin
with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house- wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the dancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
Description
Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular books ever written in the English language, published in innumerable editions and translated into almost every language of the world, not to mention the many versions created in film, television and even radio. First published in 1719, it can also claim to be one of the first novels ever written in English.
Written in the form of an autobiography, it describes the life of the eponymous narrator Robinson Crusoe. A wild youth, he breaks away from his family to go to sea. After many adventures including being captured and made into a slave, he is eventually shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of South America. Crusoe is the only survivor of the wreck. He is thus forced to find ways to survive on the island without any other assistance. His first years are miserable and hard, but he ultimately manages to domesticate goats and raise crops, making his life tolerable. While suffering from an illness, he undergoes a profound religious conversion, and begins to ascribe his survival to a beneficent Providence.
Crusoe lives alone on the island for more than twenty years until his life changes dramatically after he discovers a human footprint in the sand, indicating the undeniable presence of other human beings. These, it turns out, are the native inhabitants of the mainland, who visit the island only occasionally. To Crusoe’s horror, he discovers that these people practice cannibalism. He rescues one of their prisoners, who becomes his servant (or “man”) Friday, named for the day of the week on which he rescued him, and together, their adventures continue.
Description
The Plague is a disease that has a long and tragic history alongside humanity’s development of tightly-packed cities. A Journal of a Plague Year is a first-person narrative account of London’s last great plague outbreak in 1665, which killed an estimated 100,000 people in just 18 months.
Though written in the first-person perspective by Daniel Defoe, he was only 5 years old during the outbreak. The initials at the end of the work, “H. F.,” suggest that Journal is based on accounts of Defoe’s uncle, Henry Foe.
This highly readable short novel is fascinating not just as a historical account, but in its description of how people reacted to a deadly disease that they understood to be contagious, but yet had no cure for. Defoe derides quack doctors who killed more than they saved, and then themselves succumbed to plague. He tells of people turning to religion; of people driven mad by the death around them and raving in the streets; of people fleeing to the country, and of others barricading themselves in their homes. The ways people reacted in 1665 could be the very same ways people might have reacted today to a mysterious, deadly, and highly contagious outbreak.
o fine enough: it is a hard matter to know the mistress from the maid by their dress; nay, very often the maid shall be much the finer of the two. Our woollen manufacture suffers much by this, for nothing but silks and satins will go down with our kitchen-wenches; to support which intolerable pride, they have insensibly raised their wages to such a height as was never known in any age or nation but this.
Let us trace this from the beginning, and suppose a person has a servant-maid sent him out of the country, at fifty shillings, or three pounds a year. The girl has scarce been a week, nay, a day in her service, but a committee of servant-wenches are appointed to examine her, who advise her to raise her wages, or give warning; to encourage her to which, the herb-woman, or chandler-woman, or some other old intelligencer, provides her a place of four or five pounds a year; this sets madam cock-a-hoop, and she thinks of nothing now but vails and high wages, and so gives warning from place to place, till sh
is eyes. He breathed hard. At last he said, "Dear Father in Heaven, I live. Thou hast saved me. I thank Thee."
VII
THE FIRST NIGHT ON LAND
"Where are my companions?" That was his first thought. He began to call and halloo: "Where are you?" "Come here!" But no one answered. Then he wished to see if anyone lived on the land, and he cried, "Is there no one here? Hello!" but all remained still.
All at once he drew himself together and shrank back. He heard a bush rustle and the thought came like a flash, "That is a wild animal that will pounce upon me and tear my flesh with his teeth and claws. How shall I save myself? Where shall I fly for safety? Where shall I turn? I have nothing but my clothes and my life saved from the water. All that I had the waves have swallowed up."
And then hunger and thirst began to trouble him. He had eaten nothing the whole day and the salt water had made him sick.
In the meantime the night had come on. Robinson was very tired. Everythin
with a great deal of care.
But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house- wifely and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the dancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service, as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young; and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
Description
Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular books ever written in the English language, published in innumerable editions and translated into almost every language of the world, not to mention the many versions created in film, television and even radio. First published in 1719, it can also claim to be one of the first novels ever written in English.
Written in the form of an autobiography, it describes the life of the eponymous narrator Robinson Crusoe. A wild youth, he breaks away from his family to go to sea. After many adventures including being captured and made into a slave, he is eventually shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of South America. Crusoe is the only survivor of the wreck. He is thus forced to find ways to survive on the island without any other assistance. His first years are miserable and hard, but he ultimately manages to domesticate goats and raise crops, making his life tolerable. While suffering from an illness, he undergoes a profound religious conversion, and begins to ascribe his survival to a beneficent Providence.
Crusoe lives alone on the island for more than twenty years until his life changes dramatically after he discovers a human footprint in the sand, indicating the undeniable presence of other human beings. These, it turns out, are the native inhabitants of the mainland, who visit the island only occasionally. To Crusoe’s horror, he discovers that these people practice cannibalism. He rescues one of their prisoners, who becomes his servant (or “man”) Friday, named for the day of the week on which he rescued him, and together, their adventures continue.