There are some book lovers who turn to literature for escapism during these (take your pick: difficult, trying, unprecedented) times. And then there are the members of the Guardian’s reading club, who have selected Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year as their latest pick.
The British newspaper is urging its readers to pick up Defoe’s 1722 account of the Great Plague of London, which killed more than 100,000 people in less than two years.
Defoe’s book, as the Guardian’s Sam Jordison notes, is “is not, strictly speaking, a first-hand record.” Defoe was a young child when the bubonic plague held London in its grip; some scholars speculate the book was based on the author’s uncle’s diaries.
Nonetheless, Jordison writes, the book offers “some useful perspective on our current crisis” and “remarkable insights into human behavior under the shadow of a pandemic.”
Defoe’s book also contains some stark reminders about the wisdom of quarantining and social distancing. “And here I must observe again, that this necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions was in a great measure the ruin of the whole city; for the people catched the distemper, on these occasions, one of another,” he wrote in the book.
A Journal of the Plague Year has proved popular with readers during the pandemic: As of Tuesday afternoon, the Penguin Classics edition of the book was listed as temporarily out of stock at Bookshop.org. But those interested in reading the book along with the folks at the Guardian can always download a copy for free at Project Gutenberg.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
