The Great Plague

First published in 1924, this history reconstructs the 1665 outbreak of plague in London from bills of mortality, parish registers, and official papers. Bell follows the infection from parish to parish, the marking of houses, pesthouses, the flight of the court and the well-off, the work of searchers and constables, and the mix of medical advice, fasting, and quackery. He attends to how the poor remained in the city and how trade and burial were organised. The book is a documentary account of one epidemic, not a novel of a single household and not a medical textbook.

Bound in black cloth, cover blocked with a red and gold design by Francis Mosley. Black slipcase.