Writing in 1721 to alert a population grown indifferent to the renewed threat of the Black Death, Defoe describes, with accurate and vivid realism, the horror of plague-ridden London in 1665. Through the eyes of a saddler who had chosen to remain while multitudes fled, he re-enacts the terror of a helpless people and chronicles the decimation of their great city. Edited, with an introduction and notes by Cynthia Wall.