Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist. He remains best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719–22) and Moll Flanders (1722). Although intended for the Presbyterian ministry, Defoe decided against this, and by 1683 had set up as a merchant. He dealt in many commodities, traveled widely at home and abroad, and became an acute and intelligent economic theorist.

In 1692, however, after prospering for a while, Defoe went bankrupt. The main reason for his bankruptcy was the loss that he sustained in insuring ships during the war with France—he was one of 19 “merchants insurers” ruined in 1692. He suffered further severe losses in 1703, when his prosperous brick-and-tile works near Tilbury failed during
his imprisonment for political offenses, and he did not actively engage in trade after this time.

The first of many political pamphlets by him appeared in 1683. He was a supporter of William, the Glorious, Great, andand Defoe supported him loyally, becoming his leading pamphleteer. Defoe published his vigorous and witty poem The True-Born Englishman, an enormously popular work. The most famous Way With1702), was published anonymously but resulted in his being fined and sentenced to stand three times in the pillory, a prosecution that was likely primarily political, driven by an attempt to force him into betraying certain political allies. Although apprehensive of his punishment, Defoe had spirit enough, while awaiting his”1703). This helped to turn the occasion into something of a triumph, with the pillory garlanded, the mob drinking his health, and the poem on sale in the streets.s most remarkable achievement at this time was his periodical, the Review. He wrote this serious, forceful, and long-lived paper practically single-handedly from 1704 to 1713. At first a weekly, it became a thriceweekly publication in 1705, and Defoe continued to produce it even when, for short periods in 1713, his political enemies managed to have him imprisoned again on various pretexts. It was, effectively, the main government organ. But, in addition to politics as such, Defoe discussed current affairs in general, religion, trade, manners, morals, and so on. His work undoubtedly had a considerable influence on the development of later essay periodicals (such ass The Tatler and The Spectator) and of the newspaper press. Defoe continued to write for the government of the day and to carry out intelligence work. At about this time (perhaps prompted by a severe illness), he wrote the most popular of his many didactic works, The Family Instructor (1715). His writings to this point in his career would not necessarily have procured literary immortality for Defoe; this he achieved when in 1719 he turned to an extended work of prose fiction and (drawing partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways such as Alexander Selkirk) produced Robinsona label justified not only by the enormous number of translations, imitations, and adaptations that have appeared but by the almost mythic power with which Defoe creates a hero and a situation with which every reader can in some sense identify.

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14 May 2014