QUOTE : Resisting intense commercial pressure, Walpole’s government had drafted an<br />Act of Quarantine to keep out vessels suspected of carrying the disease. An author in the government’s pay believed to be Defoe rose vigorously to the Act’s defence in a series of ten articles for the Daily Post, Mist’s Journal, and Applebee’s Journal, signing himself ‘Quarantine’...<br /><br />Opinion was duly swayed and the Act of Quarantine gained the royal assent on 12 February 1722. Four days earlier, Defoe had published his first major work on plague, Due Preparations for the Plague, as well for the Soul as Body, and in the spring its blend of medicine and piety suffused the grand historical fiction that is A Journal of the Plague Year. If the Marseilles plague gave Defoe a publishing opportunity that had been simmering for years, it also spawned a wealth of new material for him to recycle or refute (David Roberts)