The authoritative text has been fully annotated and makes available a perennially popular novel
one that has often been mistaken for an actual eyewitness account of the last great plague in
England. Backgrounds encourages comparison of 1665 documents with those of the early 1720s
when England feared a new outbreak of the plague. Included are official government orders and
newspaper accounts as well as writings by Defoe John Graunt the College of Physicians and
others. Contexts includes eight comparative pieces united by the theme of a community in
crisis. Criticism reprints seven of the best essays on the novel including interpretations by
Sir Walter Scott Maximillian E. Novak John J. Richetti and John Bender among others. A
Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
