“Defoe’s novel, published in 1722, is a mutant factual-fiction that recounts the plague epidemic of 1665, which dispatched almost 100,000 Londoners. Purporting to be the ‘memorial’ of a survivor known only as ‘H.F.’, it was based on genuine documentary sources, including the diary of Defoe’s uncle.”
Lapham’s Quarterly explores how Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year conforms to the zombie narrative… without zombies.