A Journal of the Plague Year and The Storm: Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, pamphleteer and journalist. He is most famous for his novel "Robinson Crusoe", which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations. In A Journal of the Plague Year Defoe vividly chronicles the progress of the epidemic during The Great Plague in London, in 1665. The author follows his fictional narrator through a city transformed - the streets and alleyways deserted, the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors, the dead-carts on their way to the pits - and encounter the horrified citizens of the city. The Storm is an account of the great storm in 1703, when a hurricane from the north Atlantic hammered into Britain: it remains the worst storm the nation has ever experienced.