Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year

Benjamin Pauley
  • 5.0 (2)
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A reading of Daniel Defoe's 1722 A Journal of the Plague Year, about 20 minutes at a time.

  1. Episode 23 - The Plague Comes to an End

    04/19/2020

    Episode 23 - The Plague Comes to an End

    H.F. tells of the plague's end, but notes the disappointing fact that the people's thankfulness didn't last, nor their sense of common purpose and identity across social and sectarian lines.

    27 min
  2. Episode 22 - The Plague Begins To Abate

    04/18/2020

    Episode 22 - The Plague Begins To Abate

    H.F. notes that, in about the middle of October, the plague's virulence seemed to abate—though many continued to be infected and many continued to die, yet more of the infected recovered than had previously been the case. Seeing this, many Londoners made premature returns to their normal patterns of life, causing many to succumb in the Autumn who had survived the worst of the Summer.

    19 min
  3. Episode 21 - Effects on Foreign and Domestic Trade

    04/17/2020

    Episode 21 - Effects on Foreign and Domestic Trade

    H.F. surveys the plague's effects on foreign and domestic trade, as well as on English manufacturing.

    20 min
  4. Episode 20 - Improbable Figures

    04/16/2020

    Episode 20 - Improbable Figures

    H.F. offers an hypothesis for some seeming incongruities in the numbers of of plague deaths reported in the Bills of Mortality before turning to the effects of the epidemic on the poor, and the tremendous scale of charitable giving that sustained them through the worst of it.

    19 min
  5. Episode 19 - Silent Contagion

    04/15/2020

    Episode 19 - Silent Contagion

    H.F. argues that, while the Plague may be a general judgment of God upon a nation or city, yet it operates by natural, rather than supernatural causes. He observes that its spread was impossible to contain, given that people could infect others before they, themselves, knew that they were infected.

    20 min
  6. Episode 18 - Plague Visits The City

    04/14/2020

    Episode 18 - Plague Visits The City

    H.F. details the movement of infections from West to East, culminating in the City's bearing the brunt of the Plague in September. He reiterates the good governance of London and Westminster during the emergency.

    18 min
  7. Episode 17 - The Plague At Its Height

    04/13/2020

    Episode 17 - The Plague At Its Height

    H.F. comes to the month of September, when the plague was at its height, and notes a kind of equanimity born of Londoners' despair and resignation.

    23 min
  8. Episode 16 - On the Effectiveness of Quarantine Measures

    04/12/2020

    Episode 16 - On the Effectiveness of Quarantine Measures

    H.F. explains his reservations about the practice of shutting up houses while both sick and well people stayed in them, and grounds them in his observations during the period when he was enlisted as an Examiner of houses in his parish.

    18 min
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A reading of Daniel Defoe's 1722 A Journal of the Plague Year, about 20 minutes at a time.

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