The haunting cry of a bell-ringing collector of plague victims, "Bring out your dead!", has echoed across the centuries. It survives in historical consciousness thanks to this classic 1722 account (long a staple of college literature courses) of the epidemic of bubonic plague that ravaged England nearly 60 years earlier. A child of 5 in the plague year, Daniel Defore applied his considerable talents as both a journalist and a novelist to this historical and fictional reconstruction of the Great Plague of London in 1664-1665. Written in the form of an eyewitness report by a Londoner named "H. F.," Defoe's novel abounds in memorable and realistic details, surpassing even firsthand accounts in its air of authenticity.