A Journal of the Plague Year, A work that is often read as if it were non-fiction is his account of the Great Plague of London in 1665: a complex historical novel published in 1722. Bring out your dead! The ceaseless chant of doom echoed through a city of emptied streets and filled grave pits. For this was London in the year of 1665, the Year of the Great Plague.... In 1721, when the Black Death again threatened the European Continent, Daniel Defoe wrote "A Journal of the Plague Year" to alert a ...