Literature

The oldest of the three books. In 1969 Philip Ziegler published his book, The Black Death. It tells the story of the great plague that arrived from China and then swept through Europe between 1348 and 1351. J

Robert Gottfried’s The Black Death was published in 1983. My copy is a Papermac edition which means that this book became a standard prescribed book for a medieval history course and deservedly so. Gottfried writes about the origins of the Plague and its natural history, the European context.

John Kelly’s Great Mortality - An Intimate History of the Black Death, published in 2005, is the most recent of the three books. It is a powerful and highly readable narrative account of the Black Death. Kelly writes in a popular and journalistic style, rather reminiscent of the pace and style of Barbara Tuchman.