ABSTRACT
Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s first novel, had been published only three years earlier and had been followed by the sequel The Further Adventures. Then, out of a frenzy of creative work, there came Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack and A Journal of the Plague Year—and all this while he was carrying in his mind Roxana, which was to be published in 1724. However the Journal may be described, it would be singularly inappropriate to call it a novel; neither is it history, nor is it fiction. As age advanced upon Defoe, his warning of terrors of plague became ever more strident. As his fiftieth birthday approached, in six numbers of his Review he warned of the risk of infection if British troops went to assist Sweden in the wars against the Second Coalition. In the battle of the giants, Eros and Thanatos, it is not difficult to perceive which of the adversaries is today, at least temporarily, gaining the upper hand.
