The authoritative text has been fully annotated and makes available aperennially popular novel, one that has often been mistaken for anactual eyewitness account of the last great plague in England.<br /><br />"Backgrounds" encourages comparison of 1665 documents with those of theearly 1720s, when England feared a new outbreak of the plague.<br /><br />Included are official government orders and newspaper accounts as wellas writings by Defoe, John Graunt, the College of Physicians, andothers.<br /><br />"Contexts" includes eight comparative pieces united by the theme of acommunity in crisis.<br /><br />From Thucydides to Boccaccio to modern accounts by Albert Camus, MichelFoucault, and Susan Sontag, this collection represents some of the mostcelebrated observers and critics in western civilization who have seenwhat plagues reveal about human nature.<br /><br />"Criticism" reprints seven of the best essays on the novel, includinginterpretations by Sir Walter Scott, Maximillian E. Novak, John J.Richetti, and John Bender, among others.<br /><br />A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.