Defoe, Daniel.

Brookes, Richard. A History of the most remarkable pestilential distempers that have appeared in Europe for three hundred years past. For A. Corbett; and J. Roberts, 1721, first edition, with Luttrell's date "Septemb." and his cost "5 d."--[Byrd, William, attrib.] A discourse concerning the plague, with some preservatives against it. By a lover of mankind. J. Roberts, 1721, first edition, with Luttrell's date "July" and cost "5 d."--[Samber, Robert.]  A treatise of the plague. Being an Instruction how one ought to Act, in Relation, I. To Apparel and Lodging. II. To Diet. III. To Antidotes or Preservatives. IV. To such Medicines, as are necessary to be made use of, when any one shall be so unhappy, as to be visited with the Distemper...by Eugenius Philalethes, Jun. For James Hollands etc, 1721, first edition, with Luttrell's date "Septemb." and cost "5 d."; 8vo, three works in one volume, eighteenth-century half calf, marbled boards, re-hinged, spine cracked, slight tear to moroco label

[Journal of the Plague Year:] Moore 449; Furbank and Owens A216 

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A Journal of the Plague Year, which can be described as the author's "most under-appreciated great novel" (Oxford DNB)  was published on 17 March, in the same year as Moll Flanders. The protagonist, H.F. (perhaps referring to Defoe's uncle Henry Foe, a saddler)  lives in London throughout the plague, and is torn between staying put and escaping, between "pragmatic, even crass economic motives, and spiritual impulses, and...obsessed with determining the reasons individuals get the plague. Very much a man of the time when the world was poised between the religious certainties of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and modern scepticism and secularism, H. F. collects evidence, ponders, sorts, and entertains or rejects hypotheses about the cause of the plague even as he seeks to understand God's will and occasionally succumbs to superstitions such as bibliomancy. That H. F.'s research is hopeless...does nothing to detract from the energy of his mind and the questions Defoe raises about ethical conduct, public policy, and human limits" (op.cit.)

There is no copy of A discourse concerning the plague (1721), sometimes attributed to William Byrd, in the British Library.