![]() Since the Journal was written for advice such a state of affairs must bring you, Sir, a good deal of satisfaction. The opposite way of popularity is far more common for books getting old, yet with so many things turned upside down nowadays this phenomenon, peculiar by itself, lacks no companion in strangeness. Previously read by few, to satisfy their specific curiosities, it is now chased by many, seeking universal experience. You must be not surprised any longer, I presume, by a stranger’s letter like this when it concerns your Journal. A letter to “Journal’s” narrator, from a data scientist writing in the second plague year. I want to give them a voice once again in this letter. And data-based fiction is never closed for augmentation: data can speak more than the author transmitted. These were real and for their substantial use, we can call the “Journal” a data-based fiction. Concerning statistics included in the “Journals”, they cannot be said deluded, though. ![]() For decades the readers of “A Journal of the Plague Year” were thinking they are reading genuine memoirs of the 1665’s Great Plague eyewitness. To describe it, nearly sixty years later, in his novel, Daniel Defoe needed to dust off faded diaries, survey old medical pamphlets and query archival statistics. ![]() ![]() He was only five years old when the Great Plague broke out so could not remember it. ![]()
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