Dimensions
136 x 205 x 30mm
On the evening of 26 November 1703, a cyclone from the north Atlantic hammered into Britain at over seventy miles an hour. Eyewitnesses reported seeing cows left stranded in the branches of the trees and windmills ablaze from the friction of their whirling sails - and some 8,000 people lost their lives.
For Defoe, just released from prison for his "seditious" writings, bankrupt and desperate, the storm struck during one of his bleakest moments. But it also furnished him with the material for his first book.
In his powerful depiction of private suffering and survival played out against a backdrop of natural devastation and public calamity, we can trace the outlines of his later masterpieces 'A Journal Of The Plague Year' and 'Robinson Crusoe'.
