The Great Plague in London

First published in 1924, this history reconstructs the plague year of 1665 in London from parish registers, bills of mortality, and contemporary diaries and orders. Bell traces the infection from the western parishes through the city's wards, noting the work of searchers, watchmen, and parish officers, the shutting up of houses, pesthouses, and burial in pits. He follows the flight of the court and of those who could leave, the collapse and later recovery of trade, and the weekly rise and fall of the death-count. The book is a documentary social history of one epidemic, not Defoe's fictional journal and not a medical treatise.

Bound in red cloth, cover blocked in black, grey and white with a design by the artist. Black slipcase. Black endpapers.