The Black Death: A Personal History is a book written by author and scholar John Hatcher. It was first published June 2008 by Da Capo Press in the United States, as well as being published as The Black Death: An Intimate History by Orion in the UK before finally being re-published as The Black Death by Phoenix in 2009. The story is formed in a documentary-drama type, giving the readers both a plot and facts on how the world was during the time of the plague.
The story is set in a community in Suffolk, where John Hatcher has gone into the perspectives of the people living there, seeing how it was to live, whilst watching the people around you die and wonder for the reasons, as well as experiencing how the plague affected the body and finally killed them off. It is both dramatic and heavily factual, being a new way of showing and teaching history lessons through stories.
John Hatcher has specialized in the history of England, specifically from the middle ages to the eighteenth century, focusing on the economic, social and demographics of that time. He works as a Professor in the University of Cambridge. The Black Death is one of the many books he has written about the history of England, many of those books being used in the school setting.
