Pandemic Obsession: How They Feature in our Popular Culture

Stephen Basdeo

jul 2024 · Pen and Sword History

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"Pestilence entered... The ordinary pursuits of society were paralysed; all previously-formed plans of happiness, business, trade, occupation, and domestic arrangement, were checked as cruelly and abruptly as if every principle of the human mind were in a moment subverted... The physicians saw that human aid was vain, and that destruction inevitably awaited all who approached the infected. Terrific mortality! Appalling scourge of the human race!" — George W.M. Reynolds Throughout history humankind has faced a number of deadly pandemics and such diseases have left their mark in history books, fine art, novels, life writing, and newspapers. This book collects together writings from across the centuries which illuminate people's experiences with plagues and pandemics. From Ancient Greece there is Thucydides on the Athenian Plague; Procopius gives his account of Plague of Justinian; also included is many more extracts of writings on plagues from medieval and early modern writers. Readers can enjoy several works of fiction including an abridged version of Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), a reproduction in full of Jack London's Scarlet Plague (1912), as well as short pandemic stories from Edgar Allan Poe, George W.M. Reynolds, Daniel Defoe, and William Harrison Ainsworth.

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Dr Stephen Basdeo is Assistant Professor of History at Richmond University (RIASA Leeds). His research interests include Georgian and Victorian medievalism, as well as the history of crime. He has published widely in these areas for both an academic and non-academic audience, and regularly blogs about his research on his website (www.gesteofrobinhood.com). He has published two other works with Pen and Sword: The Life and Legend of a Rebel Leader: Wat Tyler (2018) and The Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Rogues, and Murderers (2018).