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Defoe's masterpiece is a powerful description
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by a contemporary-- in fact a survivor--
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of the most dreadful outbreak of bubonic plague
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in the history of the British Isles;
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the catastrophic visitation of 1665.
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Plague had returned in successive waves in European history,
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ever since the first visitation of 1347.
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But one of the terrible features about it
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is that over the centuries it didn't become milder,
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and some of its last visitations were the most violent
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and horrendous of all, including the epidemic
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that ravaged London in 1665.