Daniel Defoe Author:Journal of the Plague Year From late 1664 to winter 1665 bubonic plague killed about 100,000 men, women, and children. Sixty years after the horrific epidemic, Defoe wrote a reconstruction.The narrator is fictional but he relates what must have been fact. Deserted public spaces and streets. The cars taking the dead to mass graves. People unhinged by the event, now knowing... more » how it started or when it was going to end. I don't know why such a story is so fascinating to us to read. But it is. It's so fascinating that we bear with Defoe's rambling and mile-long sentences.« less