Celia Barnes is Associate Professor of English at Lawrence University.

Jack Lynch is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.

"This classroom edition of Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is not only accessibly introduced, skillfully annotated, and beautifully reconstructed. It's also joined with further readings designed to bring a classic text about a seventeenth-century urban pandemic into clearer view. Editors Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes have crafted an exemplary, teachable version of this fascinating account that resonates in our own day." -- Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

"Lynch and Barnes introduce Journal of the Plague Year to a new generation, one experienced, like the protagonist H.F., in the peculiar solitude and collective fears of plague times. This reader-friendly edition, with its generous introduction, carefully chosen plague treatises, thoughtful notes, and helpful maps of London, welcomes students to Defoe's strange world, even as it reminds us why scientific knowledge still matters." -- Lucinda Cole, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"A Journal of the Plague Year is one of Defoe's most timely works, and this outstanding edition enables modern readers to understand both the historical significance and the contemporary relevance of the text. Barnes and Lynch have assembled wonderful primary sources that situate Defoe's narrative in the context of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century religious, medical, and legal discourses and that speak to ongoing anxieties about the causes and consequences of pandemics. With an invaluable introduction, helpful notes, and carefully assembled appendices, this edition will be immensely useful for students and instructors alike." -- Melissa J. Ganz, Marquette University