In her Author’s Note, Geraldine Brooks describes her inspiration for the novel. While vacationing in the English countryside in the summer of 1990, Brooks saw a signpost pointing to “PLAGUE VILLAGE” (305), which led her to Eyam in Derbyshire, where she learned about the village’s choice to quarantine themselves during the last plague outbreak in England in 1666. Brooks returned to Eyam the following summer to conduct research. Though hers is not the first account of the village, she discovered few specific details about the 14-month quarantine. Brooks poured over 17th-century texts about medicine, religion, witch trials, and lead mining to supplement her research about the village. She incorporated some real villagers’ names into the text, while others are entirely fictionalized. The title comes from a John Dryden poem, Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666, which chronicles the apocalyptic events of The Great Plague and The Great Fire of London, both of which occurred in the same year.

Eyam, a lead mining town since the Roman occupation, had a population of less than 400. In 1665, the plague emerged once again in London. Though it was a primarily localized outbreak within Great Britain, the outbreak killed approximately 100,000 people in London and the surrounding villages.