The novel, Year of Wonders, is written from the point of view of Anna Frith, a young widow that is intelligent for the social standards and circumstances of her time. Brooks based the plot on the history of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, a county in the East Midlands of England (hey! Isn't that the setting in Pride and Prejudice?). From the notes written by the author, I learned that there was a bubonic plague outbreak lasting from 1665 to 1666 in England, later to be called the Great Plague of London. I was surprised at this fact, because the plague history I am most familiar with is the one that reached Europe during the 14th century. The Black Death, as it came to be known, was a pandemic that killed an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Europe and Asia between the years of 1346 and 1353. This 1665-66 epidemic was on a much smaller scale that the earlier Black Death pandemic, but became known as the "great" plague because it was the last widespread outbreak of the bubonic plague in England. Anyways, the special thing about the village the author chose to set the story of Year of Wonders in, Eyam, is that when the village was beset upon the plague that happened in 1666, it quarantines itself to prevent the disease from spreading even further.
Click here to learn more about the history of Eyam during the year the plague hit!
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