daniel defoe biography

Daniel Defoe

(1660-1731)

Who Was Daniel Defoe?

Daniel Defoe became a merchant and participated in several failing businesses, facing bankruptcy and aggressive creditors. He was also a prolific political pamphleteer which landed him in prison for slander. Late in life he turned his pen to fiction and wrote Robinson Crusoe , one of the most widely read and influential novels of all time.

Daniel Foe, born circa 1660, was the son of James Foe, a London butcher. Daniel later changed his name to Daniel Defoe, wanting to sound more gentlemanly.

Defoe graduated from an academy at Newington Green, run by the Reverend Charles Morton. Not long after, in 1683, he went into business, having given up an earlier intent on becoming a dissenting minister. He traveled often, selling such goods as wine and wool, but was rarely out of debt. He went bankrupt in 1692 (paying his debts for nearly a decade thereafter), and by 1703, decided to leave the business industry altogether.

Acclaimed Writer

Having always been interested in politics, Defoe published his first literary piece, a political pamphlet, in 1683. He continued to write political works, working as a journalist, until the early 1700s. Many of Defoe's works during this period targeted support for King William III, also known as "William Henry of Orange." Some of his most popular works include The True-Born Englishman, which shed light on racial prejudice in England following attacks on William for being a foreigner; and the Review , a periodical that was published from 1704 to 1713, during the reign of Queen Anne, King William II's successor. Political opponents of Defoe's repeatedly had him imprisoned for his writing in 1713.

Defoe took a new literary path in 1719, around the age of 59, when he published Robinson Crusoe , a fiction novel based on several short essays that he had composed over the years. A handful of novels followed soon after—often with rogues and criminals as lead characters—including Moll Flanders , Colonel Jack , Captain Singleton , Journal of the Plague Year and his last major fiction piece, Roxana (1724).

In the mid-1720s, Defoe returned to writing editorial pieces, focusing on such subjects as morality, politics and the breakdown of social order in England. Some of his later works include Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725); the nonfiction essay "Conjugal Lewdness: or, Matrimonial Whoredom" (1727); and a follow-up piece to the "Conjugal Lewdness" essay, entitled "A Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed."

Death and Legacy

Defoe died on April 24, 1731. While little is known about Defoe's personal life—largely due to a lack of documentation—Defoe is remembered today as a prolific journalist and author, and has been lauded for his hundreds of fiction and nonfiction works, from political pamphlets to other journalistic pieces, to fantasy-filled novels. The characters that Defoe created in his fiction books have been brought to life countless times over the years, in editorial works, as well as stage and screen productions.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Daniel Defoe
• Birth Year: 1660
• Birth City: London
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist Daniel Defoe is best known for his novels 'Robinson Crusoe' and 'Moll Flanders.'
• Fiction and Poetry
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Academy at Newington Green
• Death Year: 1731
• Death date: April 24, 1731
• Death City: London
• Death Country: United Kingdom

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• Article Title: Daniel Defoe Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
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• Last Updated: October 26, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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The Defoe Society

About daniel defoe, daniel defoe (1660-1731).

Although Defoe is best known now for his novels, much of his writing is related to political, social, and business issues. This is evident in his early writing. One of his first works, An Essay upon Projects (1697), was a series of proposals that touched on such topics as banking, highway maintenance, education, and insurance. Defoe also wrote about contemporary religious issues, and was charged with libel for one pamphlet that responded to a proposed bill to outlaw occasional conformity, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). Part of his punishment was to stand in the pillory, a potentially dangerous sentence as it left the prisoner vulnerable to the whims of the mob. However, Defoe’s friends turned the public punishment into an opportunity; not only did they stand around him as he stood in the device, but the occasion was used to sell his Hymn to the Pillory, a poem that ridicules the justice system, to the public.

Defoe’s concern about socio-political matters frequently intersected with his love of literature, and he began publishing poetic works that dealt with issues of public concern. His remarkable True-Born Englishman (1701), for example, is a satiric poem written to defend King William III, who had been frequently criticized for his foreign upbringing. What right, Defoe suggests in the poem, do the English people, themselves a rag-tag group of nationalities, have to criticize those who are from elsewhere? Another of his writing ventures was a newspaper, The Review, which was, as Paula R. Backscheider has recently noted, a “ground-breaking periodical that moved English journalism in new directions” (Online DNB).

As Defoe wrote the works that we are most familiar with now— Robinson Crusoe  (1719),  Captain Singleton  (1720),  Moll Flanders  (1722),  Colonel Jack  (1722),  Journal of the Plague Year  (1722), and  Roxana  (1724)—he was also producing numerous innovative texts in widely varied genres and on very different themes. For example, alongside the significant number of political pamphlets and essays produced, he published travel literature, such as  The Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain  (1724-6), commentaries on religion, such as the satirical  Political History of the Devil  (1726), and self-help manuals, like  The Family Instructor  (1715).

Defoe scholarship has been vibrant and exciting for many decades, but there is much left to do. Backscheider has recently reminded us that less than a quarter of Defoe’s works are currently in print, a dilemma that scholars are currently working to resolve. And there are continually exciting new avenues opening up through which we can approach Defoe’s corpus. It is the objective of this society to find creative new ways to facilitate this scholarship and to open new avenues of collaboration.

This entry has only briefly touched on a few key facts about Daniel Defoe. There are numerous superb scholarly biographies on Defoe and his work that will allow you to explore at greater length his life, and the impressive variety of his work, both in terms of subject matter and genre. You might start with some of the following, to which I am indebted for this brief biography. They are listed in order of the date of publication, starting with the most recent:

• P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens.  A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe . London: Pickering & Chatto, 2006.
• John Richetti.  Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography . Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005.
• Maximillian E. Novak.  Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Backscheider, Paula R.  Daniel Defoe: His Life . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

For those with access to the online Oxford Dictionary of Biography, you might also want to check out its excellent, brief biography of Defoe, contributed by Paula R. Backscheider.

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660 [?] – April 24-26, 1731) was an English journalist, novelist and spy, who is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the novel . Although there is some debate over whether Defoe can be rightly called the first novelist in England, he is almost certainly the first novelist to widely popularize the form. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote over five hundred volumes worth of journalism, essays, fiction, poetry, and correspondence.

Famous for his wicked sense of irony (Defoe's penchant for satire got him trouble with the law on several occasions), Defoe remains popular and readable today when many other authors of his time have faded away. Defoe wrote his fiction primarily to pay the bills, and the hurried quality of his writing is certainly visible even in some of his more accomplished novels.

• 1 Biography
• 2.1 Synopsis
• 2.2 Reception
• 3 Quotations
• 5 Bibliography

Nevertheless, Defoe is of great importance to literary history, not only for the exemplary mastery of his prose, but also for his critical insight into the politics and society of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England. Few writers were as closely integrated into the English political system as Defoe, who as a secret agent risked his life for the crown on numerous occasions. Defoe offers us some of the most luminous commentary on the state of English politics and mores, and he does so in prose that is some of the liveliest of his times. Defoe has never fallen out of popularity among readers of English literature.

Defoe was born Daniel Foe , probably in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. Both the date and the place of his birth are uncertain. His father, James Foe, though a member of the Butchers' Company, was a tallow chandler. Daniel later added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. His parents were Presbyterian dissenters, and he was educated in a Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington run by Charles Morton. Morton would go on to become the vice president of Harvard University , and he undoubtedly influenced the young Defoe with his commanding public oratory and his preference for the prose of John Bunyan .

After leaving school Defoe decided not to become a minister, entering instead the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woolen goods, and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship, he was rarely free from debt. In 1684 Defoe married a woman by the name of Mary Tuffley. Their marriage was most likely a rough one with his recurring debts. They had eight children, six of whom survived. In 1685 he joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion, after which he was forced to spend three years in exile. In 1692 Defoe was arrested for payments of £700 (and his cats were seized), though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000. His laments were loud, and he always defended unfortunate debtors, but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest.

Following his release, he probably traveled in Europe and Scotland . By 1695 he was back in England, using the name "Defoe" and serving as "commissioner of the glass duty," responsible for collecting the tax on bottles. In 1701 Defoe wrote one of his most successful early pieces, The True-Born Englishman , a witty defense of King William of Orange , who had been criticized during his reign for his foreign-birth. The True-Born Englishman , still highly readable today, is considered one of the finest examples of Defoe's wry wit, as well as an eloquent critique of ethnic prejudice.

In 1703 Defoe published an ironic attack on the High Tories in form of a pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters," in which he (comedically) argues for the extermination of all those who dissent from the Church of England . In the uproar that followed, Defoe was prosecuted for seditious libel , sentenced to be pilloried, fined £200 and detained at the queen's pleasure. In despair, Defoe wrote to William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England , who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster of the English Government. Harley brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's cooperation as an intelligence agent.

Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703, which raged November 26-27, the only true hurricane ever to have made it over the Atlantic Ocean to the British Isles at full strength. It caused severe damage to London and Bristol, uprooted millions of trees, and over eight thousand people lost their lives, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe's first book, The Storm (1704).

In the same year he set up his periodical The Review , written almost entirely by himself. The Review ran without interruption and was published thrice weekly until 1713, and was one of the most active periodicals of its time. Although Defoe originally began the periodical to assist Harley by publishing political propaganda, within a short time the Review encompassed articles on fashion, religion, society and the arts. Defoe's writings for the Review helped to set the standard for literary publications in eighteenth-century England, and, decades later, when Joseph Addison and Richard Steele would establish the Tatler and Spectator , they would draw much of their inspiration directly from Defoe.

By September 1706 Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent, to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence to the Union Act. He was very conscious of the risk to himself. The political climate in Scotland was such that had Defoe been found out he could have very well been killed; nonetheless, even as a secret agent, Defoe continued to write and publish prolifically. In particular, a sequence of letters written to Harley and others during his tenure as a spy have become popular reading among scholars and general readers alike. Decades later, in 1726, Defoe would draw on many of his experiences as a well-traveled secret agent in his Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain .

For the next ten years Defoe continued to devote most of his time to writing for the Review and conducting missions on behalf of the government's secret service. In 1715 he published his lengthiest non-fiction work, the heavily didactic The Family Instructor , which, while somewhat popular in its day, strikes modern readers as far too instructional. It would not be until 1719, when Defoe turned to writing fiction, that his fortunes would dramatically change. With the 1719 publication of Robinson Crusoe , Defoe was catapulted to the top of literary society. His novel, which has been a best seller for hundreds of years, was radically original in its time. Drawing on his years of training as a journalist, Defoe wrote Crusoe in a plain, unadorned, immediately accessible style peppered with his characteristic irony and wit. The novel was still a relative new literary genre at the time of Crusoe' s publication, and Robinson Crusoe is often credited with bringing the novelistic form into the mainstream of English literature.

Defoe based the story of Crusoe almost certainly on the autobiography of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman who had been marooned on a desert island for a number of years. While Defoe almost unquestionably utilized Selkirk as the basis for his story, he transformed the simple outline of the plot into a medium for high art and extraordinary humor. Crusoe's adventures on his desert island are drawn from equal parts reliable history and pure fantasy, and it is in the fantastical elements that Defoe's novel rises to its highest peak: by isolating poor Crusoe on his desert island, Defoe is able to delve deep into the mind of his character, producing scenes of lasting power and insight.

Following on the heels of his international success with Crusoe , Defoe set off on a flurry of more fiction writing. In 1722 alone he published three novels, including two which have become world classics: Moll Flanders , the story of a young woman's descent into moral depravity and her eventual redemption in America; and A Journal of the Plague Year , a fictionalized account (writing in chillingly realistic prose) of the year 1665, when the Great Plague swept through London.

In 1724 Defoe ended his lengthy experiment in fiction by publishing Roxana , his final novel. Although his health was in decline he continued to write prolifically as a journalist, essayist, and general muckraker until his death on April 24 or 25, 1731. He is buried in Bunhill Fields, London.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe , universally considered Defoe's masterpiece, is also sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the eponymous hero, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote island, encountering savages, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

The full title of the novel is: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates. Written by Himself .

Crusoe leaves England on a sea voyage in September 1651 against the wishes of his parents. The ship is taken over by Barbary pirates , and Crusoe becomes the slave of a Moor. He manages to escape with a boat and is befriended by the captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa. The ship is en route to Brazil . There, with the help of the captain, Crusoe becomes owner of a plantation.

He joins an expedition to bring slaves from Africa, but he is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco River. His companions all die; he manages to fetch arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. He proceeds to build a fenced-in habitation and cave. He reads the Bible and slowly becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but society.

He discovers native cannibals occasionally visit the island to perform human sacrifice. At first he plans to kill the savages for their abomination, but then he realizes that he has no right to do so as the cannibals have not attacked him and do not knowingly commit a crime. He dreams of acquiring a friend and servant by freeing one of the savages, and indeed, when one manages to escape, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion "Friday" after the day of the week he appeared, teaching him English and converting him to Christianity.

After another party of natives arrives to partake in a grisly feast, Crusoe and Friday manage to kill most of the natives and save two of the prisoners. One is Friday's father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe that there are other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised for the Spaniard to return with Friday's father to the mainland and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; mutineers have taken control of the ship and intend to maroon their former captain on the island. The captain and Crusoe manage to retake the ship. They leave for England, leaving behind three of the mutineers to fend for themselves and inform the Spaniards what had occurred. From Portugal, he travels overland to England; during winter in the Pyrenees , he and his companions have to fend off an attack by vicious wolves. Back in England, he decides to sell his plantation, as returning to Brazil would entail converting to Catholicism . Later in life, after marrying, having three children and becoming widowed, he returns to his island for a last time. The book ends with a hint about a sequel that would detail his return to the island.

The book was first published on April 25, 1719. The positive reception was immediate and universal. Before the end of the year, the first volume had run through four editions. Within years, it had reached an audience as wide as any book ever written in English. By the end of the nineteenth century, no book in the history of Western literature had spawned more editions, spin-offs, and translations (even into languages such as Inuit, Coptic, and Maltese) than Robinson Crusoe , with more than seven hundred such alternative versions. [1]

• “One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand.” (Robinson Crusoe)
• “Wherever God erects a house of prayer the Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, the latter has the largest congregation.“ ( The True-Born Englishman , 1701)
• ↑ Watt, Ian. "Robinson Crusoe as a Myth." Essays in Criticism (April 1951). Reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition (second edition, 1994) of Robinson Crusoe .

Bibliography

• Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates . Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999. ISBN 0486404889
• Defoe, Daniel. The Storm . Penguin Classics, 2005. ISBN 0141439920
• Defoe, Daniel. A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain . 1724-1727.

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• The Victorian Web - Biography of Daniel Defoe
• Christian Classics Ethereal Library - Daniel Defoe
• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - Daniel Defoe
• Poetry Foundation - Biography of Daniel Defoe
• Official Site of the Daniel Defoe Society
• Michigan State University Libraries - Defoe and the Plague in London 1664-1665
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• Daniel Defoe - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

With George I’s accession (1714), the Tories fell. The Whigs in their turn recognized Defoe’s value, and he continued to write for the government of the day and to carry out intelligence work. At about this time, too (perhaps prompted by a severe illness), he wrote the best known and most popular of his many didactic works, The Family Instructor (1715). The writings so far mentioned, however, would not necessarily have procured literary immortality for Defoe; this he achieved when in 1719 he turned his talents to an extended work of prose fiction and (drawing partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways such as Alexander Selkirk ) produced Robinson Crusoe . A German critic has called it a “world-book,” a 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.

Here (as in his works of the remarkable year 1722, which saw the publication of Moll Flanders , A Journal of the Plague Year , and Colonel Jack ) Defoe displays his finest gift as a novelist—his insight into human nature . The men and women he writes about are all, it is true, placed in unusual circumstances; they are all, in one sense or another, solitaries; they all struggle, in their different ways, through a life that is a constant scene of jungle warfare; they all become, to some extent, obsessive. They are also ordinary human beings, however, and Defoe, writing always in the first person, enters into their minds and analyzes their motives. His novels are given verisimilitude by their matter-of-fact style and their vivid concreteness of detail; the latter may seem unselective, but it effectively helps to evoke a particular, circumscribed world. Their main defects are shapelessness, an overinsistent moralizing, occasional gaucheness, and naiveté. Defoe’s range is narrow, but within that range he is a novelist of considerable power, and his plain, direct style, as in almost all of his writing, holds the reader’s interest.

In 1724 he published his last major work of fiction, Roxana, though in the closing years of his life, despite failing health, he remained active and enterprising as a writer.

A man of many talents and author of an extraordinary range and number of works, Defoe remains in many ways an enigmatic figure. A man who made many enemies, he has been accused of double-dealing, of dishonest or equivocal conduct, of venality. Certainly in politics he served in turn both Tory and Whig; he acted as a secret agent for the Tories and later served the Whigs by “infiltrating” extremist Tory journals and toning them down. But Defoe always claimed that the end justified the means, and a more sympathetic view may see him as what he always professed to be, an unswerving champion of moderation. At the age of 59 Defoe embarked on what was virtually a new career, producing in Robinson Crusoe the first of a remarkable series of novels and other fictional writings that resulted in his being called the father of the English novel .

Defoe’s last years were clouded by legal controversies over allegedly unpaid bonds dating back a generation, and it is thought that he died in hiding from his creditors. His character Moll Flanders, born in Newgate Prison, speaks of poverty as “a frightful spectre,” and it is a theme of many of his books.

• World Biography

Daniel Defoe Biography

Born: 1660 London, England Died: April 24, 1731 London, England English writer, journalist, and poet

Daniel Defoe was the first of the great eighteenth-century English novelists. He wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, articles, and poems.

Education, marriage, and early career

Little is known about the birth and early childhood of Daniel Defoe, as no baptism record exists for him. It is likely that he was born in London, England, in 1660. James Foe, his father, was a butcher by trade and also a Protestant Presbyterian (considered to be a person who thought differently and did not believe in or belong to the Church of England). (Daniel Defoe added the De to his original last name Foe when he was forty.) He had a sister, Elizabeth, who was born a year earlier. When he was ten, his mother died. He had early thoughts of becoming a Presbyterian minister, and in the 1670s he attended the Reverend Charles Morton's famous academy near London.

In 1684 Defoe married Mary Tuffley, who brought him the handsome dowry of 3,700 pounds. They had seven children. Defoe participated briefly in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, a Protestant uprising, but escaped capture and punishment. From 1685 through 1692 he engaged in trade in London as a wholesale hosiery agent, an importer of wine and tobacco, and part owner and insurer of ships.

Defoe evidently did business with King William III (1650–1702). He suffered losses from underwriting marine insurance for the king and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1692. Although he settled with the people to whom he owed money in 1693, he faced the threat of bankruptcy throughout his life and faced imprisonment for debt and libel (the crime of writing or publishing untrue statements that harm other people) seven times.

Journalist and secret agent

Arrested in 1703 for having published The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in 1702, Defoe was tried and sentenced, put before public abuse, and taken to prison. Robert Walpole (1676–1745) released him five months later and offered him a post as a government agent. Defoe continued to serve the government as journalist, pamphleteer, and secret agent for the remainder of his life. The most long-lived of his twenty-seven periodicals, the Review (1704–1713), was especially influential in promoting the union between England and Scotland in 1706 and 1707 and in supporting the controversial Peace of Utrecht of 1713 (one of the greatest peace settlements in history that balanced power in Europe).

His nonfiction—essays, poems

Defoe published hundreds of political and social documents between 1704 and 1719. His interests and activities reflect the major social, political, economic, and literary trends of his age. He supported the policies of William III and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 1689, and analyzed England's growth as the major sea and mercantile (having to do with merchandise and trade) power in the Western world. He pleaded for sympathy for debtors and defended the rights of Protestant dissenters (people who opposed the beliefs of the Church of England). He used newspapers and journals to make his points.

His first major work, An Essay upon Projects (1697), proposed ways of providing better roads, insurance, and education to be supported by "a Tax upon Learning, to be paid by the Authors of Books." Many of these topics reappeared in his later works.

In 1701 Defoe published The True-Born Englishman, the most widely sold poem in English up to that time. He estimated that more than eighty thousand copies of this defense of William III against the attacks of John Tutchin were sold. Although Defoe's The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), which ridiculed the harshness of the Church of England, led to his arrest, the popularity of his Hymn to the Pillory (1703) indicated the favor that he had found with the London public.

Robinson Crusoe

At the age of fifty-nine, after a full career as businessman, government servant, political pamphleteer, and journalist, Defoe began a career as novelist. Within six years he produced six novels, all of which gave him his greatest fame.

Other major fiction

Defoe published comparatively little in 1721, because he was hard at work on the three major books that were to appear the following year. In January 1722 he published The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, probably the most successful of his novels. A Journal of the Plague Year, issued in March 1722, presented a picture of life in London during the Great Plague of 1665; it was thought to be history rather than fiction for more than a hundred years. His third novel, The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Col. Jacque, was published in December 1722.

In 1724 and 1725 Defoe published four successful books, each displaying his characteristically clear, strong English words. The Fortunate Mistress; or, … Roxana was the first of three in 1724. The second, A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain was one of the most thorough guidebooks of the period, and the third, The History of the Remarkable Life of John, was one of his finest criminal biographies. The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild was the fourth book, published in 1725.

Last Works and death

Although he continued to write, only a few of Defoe's later works are worthy of note: The Complete English Tradesman (1725), The Political History of the Devil (1726), A New Family Instructor (1727), and Augusta Triumphans (1728), which was Defoe's plan to make "London the most flourishing City in the Universe."

Daniel Defoe died at age seventy-one on April 24, 1731, outside of London, England.

For More Information

Hunter, J. Paul. The Reluctant Pilgrim. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.

Moore, John Robert. A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960.

Secord, Arthur W. Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1924.

Trent, William P. Daniel Defoe, How to Know Him. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1916. Reprint, New York, Phaeton Press, 1971.

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Daniel Defoe

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• Biography / E2-Resources

Daniel Defoe Biography

by EILeditor · Published March 2, 2019 · Updated September 4, 2020

Daniel Defoe (c. 1659–1731) was an English author and political pamphleteer born in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of 1659 or early in 1660, of a nonconformist family. Other spellings of his name include D. Foe, de Foe, or DeFoe.

Defoe’s grandfather, Daniel Foe, lived at Etton, Northamptonshire, apparently in comfortable circumstances, for he is said to have kept a pack of hounds. As to the variation of name, Defoe or Foe, its owner signed either indifferently till late in life, and where his initials occur they are sometimes D. F. and sometimes D. D. F. Three autograph letters of his are extant, all addressed in 1705 to the same person, and signed respectively D. Foe, de Foe and Daniel Defoe. His father, James Foe, was a butcher and a citizen of London.

Education and attempt at business

On the 26th of January 1688 he was admitted a liveryman of the city of London, having claimed his freedom by birth. Before his western escapade he had taken up the business of hosiery factor. At the entry of William and Mary into London he is said to have served as a volunteer trooper “gallantly mounted and richly accoutred.” In these days he lived at Tooting, and was instrumental in forming a dissenting congregation there. His business operations at this period appear to have been extensive and various. He seems to have been a sort of commission merchant, especially in Spanish and Portuguese goods, and at some time to have visited Spain on business. In 1692 he failed for £17,000. His misfortunes made him write both feelingly and forcibly on the bankruptcy laws; and although his creditors accepted a composition, he afterwards honourably paid them in full, a fact attested by independent and not very friendly witnesses. Subsequently, he undertook first the secretaryship and then the management and chief ownership of some tile-works at Tilbury, but here also he was unfortunate, and his imprisonment in 1703 brought the works to a standstill, and he lost £3000. From this time forward we hear of no settled business in which he engaged.

Early political writing

The course of Defoe’s life was determined about the middle of the reign of William III by his introduction to that monarch and other influential persons. He frequently boasts of his personal intimacy with the “glorious and immortal” king, and in 1695 he was appointed accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty, an office which he held for four years. During this time he produced his Essay on Projects (1698), containing suggestions on banks, road-management, friendly and insurance societies of various kinds, idiot asylums, bankruptcy, academies, military colleges, high schools for women, etc. It displays Defoe’s lively and lucid style in full vigour, and abounds with ingenious thoughts and apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the unsystematic character of his mind.

In the same year Defoe wrote the first of a long series of pamphlets on the then burning question of occasional conformity. In this, for the first time, he showed the unlucky independence which, in so many other instances, united all parties against him. While he pointed out to the dissenters the scandalous inconsistency of their playing fast and loose with sacred things, yet he denounced the impropriety of requiring tests at all. In support of the government he published, in 1698, An Argument for a Standing Army, followed in 1700 by a defence of William’s war policy called The Two Great Questions considered, and a set of pamphlets on the Partition Treaty. Thus in political matters he had the same fate as in ecclesiastical; for the Whigs were no more prepared than the Tories to support William through thick and thin. He also dealt with the questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption.

But his most remarkable publication at this time was The True-Born Englishman (1701), a satire in rough but extremely vigorous verse on the national objection to William as a foreigner, and on the claim of purity of blood for a nation which Defoe chooses to represent as crossed and dashed with all the strains and races in Europe. He also took a prominent part in the proceedings which followed the Kentish petition, and was the author, some say the presenter, of the Legion Memorial, which asserted in the strongest terms the supremacy of the electors over the elected, and of which even an irate House of Commons did not dare to take much notice. The theory of the indefeasible supremacy of the freeholders of England, whose delegates merely, according to this theory, the Commons were, was one of Defoe’s favourite political tenets, and he returned to it in a powerfully written tract entitled The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England examined and asserted (1701).

At the same time he was occupied in a controversy on the conformity question with John How (or Howe) on the practice of “occasional conformity.” Defoe maintained that the dissenters who attended the services of the English Church on particular occasions to qualify themselves for office were guilty of inconsistency. At the same time he did not argue for the complete abolition of the tests, but desired that they should be so framed as to make it possible for most Protestants conscientiously to subscribe to them. Here again his moderation pleased neither party.

Church condemnation

The death of William was a great misfortune to Defoe, and he soon felt the power of his adversaries. After publishing The Mock Mourners, intended to satirize and rebuke the outbreak of Jacobite joy at the king’s death, he turned his attention once more to ecclesiastical subjects, and, in an evil hour for himself, wrote the anonymous Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), a statement in the most forcible terms of the extreme “high-flying” position, which some high churchmen were unwary enough to endorse, without any suspicion of the writer’s ironical intention. The author was soon discovered; and, as he absconded, an advertisement was issued offering a reward for his apprehension, and giving the only personal description we possess of him, as “a middle-sized spare man about forty years-old, of a brown complexion and dark brown-coloured hair, but wears a wig; a hooked nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.” In this conjuncture Defoe had really no friends, for the dissenters were as much alarmed at his book as the high-flyers were irritated. He surrendered, and his defence appears to have been injudiciously conducted; at any rate he was fined 200 marks, and condemned to be pilloried three times, to be imprisoned indefinitely, and to find sureties for his good behaviour during seven years. It was in reference to this incident that Pope, whose Catholic rearing made him detest the abettor of the Revolution and the champion of William of Orange, wrote in the Dunciad — “Earless on high stands unabash’d Defoe” — though he knew that the sentence to the pillory had long ceased to entail the loss of ears. Defoe’s exposure in the pillory (July 29, 30, 31) was, however, rather a triumph than a punishment, for the populace took his side; and his Hymn to the Pillory, which he soon after published, is one of the best of his poetical works. Unluckily for him his condemnation had the indirect effect of destroying his business at Tilbury.

He remained in prison until August 1704, and then owed his release to the intercession of Robert Harley, who represented his case to the queen, and obtained for him not only liberty but pecuniary relief and employment, which, of one kind or another, lasted until the termination of Anne’s reign. Defoe was uniformly grateful to the minister, and his language respecting him is in curious variance with that generally used. There is no doubt that Harley, who understood the influence wielded by Defoe, made some conditions. Defoe says he received no pension, but his subsequent fidelity was at all events indirectly rewarded; moreover, Harley’s moderation in a time of the extremest party-insanity was no little recommendation to Defoe.

A prolific writer

During his imprisonment he was by no means idle. A spurious edition of his works having been issued, he himself produced a collection of twenty-two treatises, to which some time afterwards he added a second group of eighteen more. He also wrote in prison many short pamphlets, chiefly controversial, published a curious work on the famous storm of the 26th of November 1703, and started in February 1704 perhaps the most remarkable of all his projects, The Review. This was a paper which was issued during the greater part of its life three times a week. It was entirely written by Defoe, and extends to eight complete volumes and some few score numbers of a second issue. He did not confine himself to news, but wrote something very like finished essays on questions of policy, trade and domestic concerns; he also introduced a “Scandal Club,” in which minor questions of manners and morals were treated in a way which undoubtedly suggested the Tatlers and Spectators which followed. Only one complete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in the British Museum. It is probable that if bulk, rapidity of production, variety of matter, originality of design, and excellence of style be taken together, hardly any author can show a work of equal magnitude. After his release Defoe went to Bury St Edmunds, though he did not interrupt either his Review or his occasional pamphlets. One of these, Giving Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation (1704), is extraordinarily far-sighted. It denounces both indiscriminate alms-giving and the national work-shops proposed by Sir Humphrey Mackworth.

In 1705 appeared The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon, a political satire which is supposed to have given some hints for Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels; and at the end of the year Defoe performed a secret mission, the first of several of the kind, for Harley. In 1706 appeared the True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, long supposed to have been written for a bookseller to help off an unsaleable translation of Drelincourt, On Death, but considerable doubt has been cast upon this by William Lee. Defoe’s next work was Jure divino, a long poetical argument in (bad) verse; and soon afterwards (1706) he began to be much employed in promoting the union with Scotland. Not only did he write pamphlets as usual on the project, and vigorously recommend it in The Review, but in October 1706 he was sent on a political mission to Scotland by Sidney Godolphin, to whom Harley had recommended him. He resided in Edinburgh for nearly sixteen months, and his services to the government were repaid by a regular salary. He seems to have devoted himself to commercial and literary as well as to political matters, and prepared at this time his elaborate History of the Union, which appeared in 1709. In this year Henry Sacheverell delivered his famous sermons, and Defoe wrote several tracts about them and attacked the preacher in his Review.

Political problems

In 1710 Harley returned to power, and Defoe was placed in a somewhat awkward position. To Harley himself he was bound by gratitude and by a substantial agreement in principle, but with the rest of the Tory ministry he had no sympathy. He seems, in fact, to have agreed with the foreign policy of the Tories and with the home policy of the Whigs, and naturally incurred the reproach of time-serving and the hearty abuse of both parties. At the end of 1710 he again visited Scotland. In the negotiations concerning the Peace of Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported the ministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, displayed in an attempted prosecution against some pamphlets of his on the all-important question of the succession. Again the influence of Harley saved him. He continued, however, to take the side of the dissenters in the questions affecting religious liberty, which played such a prominent part towards the close of Anne’s reign. He naturally shared Harley’s downfall; and, though the loss of his salary might seem a poor reward for his constant support of the Hanoverian claim, it was little more than his ambiguous, not to say trimming, position must have led him to expect.

Defoe declared that Lord Annesley was preparing the army in Ireland to join a Jacobite rebellion, and was indicted for libel; and prior to his trial (1715) he published an apologia entitled An Appeal to Honour and Justice, in which he defended his political conduct. Having been convicted of the libel he was liberated later in the year under circumstances that only became clear in 1864, when six letters were discovered in the Record Office from Defoe to a Government official, Charles Delafaye, which, according to William Lee, established the fact that in 1718 at least Defoe was doing not only political work, but that it was of a somewhat equivocal kind—that he was, in fact, sub-editing the Jacobite Mist’s Journal, under a secret agreement with the government that he should tone down the sentiments and omit objectionable items. He had, in fact, been released on condition of becoming a government agent. He seems to have performed the same not very honourable office in the case of two other journals—Dormer’s Letter and the Mercurius Politicus; and to have written in these and other papers until nearly the end of his life. Before these letters were discovered it was supposed that Defoe’s political work had ended in 1715.

Robinson Crusoe

Meanwhile the first two parts were reprinted as a feuilleton in Heathcote’s Intelligencer, perhaps the earliest instance of the appearance of such a work in such a form. The story was founded on Dampier’s Voyage round the World (1697), and still more on Alexander Selkirk’s adventures, as communicated by Selkirk himself at a meeting with Defoe at the house of Mrs. Damaris Daniel at Bristol. Selkirk afterwards told Mrs. Daniel that he had handed over his papers to Defoe. Robinson Crusoe was immediately popular, and a wild story was set afloat of its having been written by Lord Oxford in the Tower. A curious idea, at one time revived by Henry Kingsley, is that the adventures of Robinson are allegorical and relate to Defoe’s own life. This idea was certainly entertained to some extent at the time, and derives some colour of justification from words of Defoe’s, but there seems to be no serious foundation for it. Robinson Crusoe (especially the story part, with the philosophical and religious moralizings largely cut out) is one of the world’s classics in fiction. Crusoe’s shipwreck and adventures, his finding the footprint in the sand, his man “Friday,” — the whole atmosphere of romance which surrounds the position of the civilized man fending for himself on a desert island — these have made Defoe’s great work an imperishable part of English literature. Contemporaneously appeared The Dumb Philosopher, or Dickory Cronke, who gains the power of speech at the end of his life and uses it to predict the course of European affairs.

Other non-fiction works

In 1720 came The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell. This was not entirely a work of imagination, its hero, the fortune-teller, being a real person. There are amusing passages in the story, but it is too desultory to rank with Defoe’s best. In the same year appeared two wholly or partially fictitious histories, each of which might have made a reputation for any man. The first was the Memoirs of a Cavalier , which Lord Chatham believed to be true history, and which William Lee considers the embodiment at least of authentic private memoirs. The Cavalier was declared at the time to be Andrew Newport, made Lord Newport in 1642. His elder brother was born in 1620 and the Cavalier gives 1608 as the date of his birth, so that the facts do not fit the dates. It is probable that Defoe, with his extensive acquaintance with English history, and his astonishing power of working up details, was fully equal to the task of inventing it. As a model of historical work of a certain kind it is hardly surpassable, and many separate passages — accounts of battles and skirmishes — have never been equalled except by Carlyle. Captain Singleton , the last work of the year, has been unjustly depreciated by most of the commentators. The record of the journey across Africa, with its surprising anticipations of subsequent discoveries, yields in interest to no work of the kind known to us; and the semi-piratical Quaker who accompanies Singleton in his buccaneering expeditions is a most life-like character. There is also a Quaker who plays a very creditable part in Roxana (1724), and Defoe seems to have been well affected to the Friends. In estimating this wonderful productiveness on the part of a man sixty years-old, it should be remembered that it was a habit of Defoe’s to keep his work in manuscript sometimes for long periods.

In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the next twelvemonth three capital works appeared. These were The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders , The Journal of the Plague Year , and The History of Colonel Jack . Moll Flanders and The Fortunate Mistress (Roxana), which followed in 1724, have subjects of a rather more than questionable character, but both display the remarkable art with which Defoe handles such subjects. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the difference between the two is that between gross and polished vice. The real difference is much more one of morals than of manners. Moll is by no means of the lowest class. Notwithstanding the greater degradation into which she falls, and her originally dependent position, she has been well educated, and has consorted with persons of gentle birth. She displays throughout much greater real refinement of feeling than the more high-flying Roxana, and is at any rate flesh and blood, if the flesh be somewhat frail and the blood somewhat hot. Neither of the heroines has any but the rudiments of a moral sense; but Roxana, both in her original transgression and in her subsequent conduct, is actuated merely by avarice and selfishness—vices which are peculiarly offensive in connexion with her other failing, and which make her thoroughly repulsive. The art of both stories is great, and that of the episode of the daughter Susannah in Roxana is consummate; but the transitions of the later plot are less natural than those in Moll Flanders. It is only fair to notice that while the latter, according to Defoe’s more usual practice, is allowed to repent and end happily, Roxana is brought to complete misery; Defoe’s morality, therefore, required more repulsiveness in one case than in the other.

In the Journal of the Plague Year , more usually called, from the title of the second edition, A History of the Plague , the accuracy and apparent veracity of the details is so great that many persons have taken it for an authentic record, while others have contended for the existence of such a record as its basis. But here, too, the genius of Mrs. Veal’s creator must, in the absence of all evidence to the contrary, be allowed sufficient for the task. The History of Colonel Jack is an unequal book. There is hardly in Robinson Crusoe a scene equal, and there is consequently not in English literature a scene superior, to that where the youthful pickpocket first exercises his trade, and then for a time loses his ill-gotten gains. But a great part of the book, especially the latter portion, is dull; and in fact it may be generally remarked of Defoe that the conclusions of his tales are not equal to the beginning, perhaps from the restless indefatigability with which he undertook one work almost before finishing another.

To this period belong his stories of famous criminals, of Jack Sheppard (1724), of Jonathan Wild (1725), of the Highland Rogue i.e. Rob Roy (1723). The pamphlet on the first of these Defoe maintained to be a transcript of a paper which he persuaded Sheppard to give to a friend at his execution.

In 1724 appeared also the first volume of A Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain , which was completed in the two following years. Much of the information in this was derived from personal experience, for Defoe claims to have made many more tours and visits about England than those of which we have record; but the major part must necessarily have been dexterous compilation. In 1725 appeared A New Voyage Round the World , apparently entirely due to the author’s own fertile imagination and extensive reading. It is full of his peculiar verisimilitude and has all the interest of Anson’s or Dampier’s voyages, with a charm of style superior even to that of the latter.

More political commentary

In 1726 Defoe published a curious and amusing little pamphlet entitled Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business, or Private Abuses Public Grievances, exemplified in the Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, etc. This subject was a favourite one with him, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views by advocating legislative interference in these matters. Towards the end of this same year The Complete English Tradesman , which may be supposed to sum up the experience of his business life, appeared, and its second volume followed two years afterwards. This book has been variously judged. It is generally and traditionally praised, but those who have read it will be more disposed to agree with Charles Lamb, who considers it “of a vile and debasing tendency,” and thinks it “almost impossible to suppose the author in earnest.” The intolerable meanness advocated for the sake of the paltriest gains, the entire ignoring of any pursuit in life except money-getting, and the representation of the whole duty of man as consisting first in the attainment of a competent fortune, and next, when that fortune has been attained, in spending not more than half of it, are certainly repulsive enough. But there are no reasons for thinking the performance ironical or insincere, and it cannot be doubted that Defoe would have been honestly unable even to understand Lamb’s indignation.

To 1726 also belongs The Political History of the Devil . This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe’s ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are A System of Magic (1726), and An Essay on the History of Apparitions (1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible; but in The History of the Devil he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the manner in which he handles the subject is an odd and not altogether satisfactory mixture of irony and earnestness. A Plan of English Commerce , containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared in 1728.

Religious commentary

During the years from 1715 to 1728 Defoe had issued pamphlets and minor works too numerous to mention. The only one of them perhaps which requires notice is Religious Courtship (1722), a curious series of dialogues displaying Defoe’s unaffected religiosity, and at the same time the rather meddling intrusiveness with which he applied his religious notions. This was more flagrantly illustrated in one of his latest works, The Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the Marriage Bed (1727), which was originally issued with a much more offensive name, and has been called “an excellent book with an improper title.” The Memoirs of Captain Carleton (1728) were long attributed to Defoe, but the internal evidence is strongly against his authorship. They have been also attributed to Swift, with greater probability as far as style is concerned. The Life of Mother Ross , reprinted in Bohn’s edition, has no claim whatever to be considered Defoe’s.

Private life and legacy

There is little to be said of Defoe’s private life during this period. He must in some way or other have obtained a considerable income. In 1724 he had built himself a large house at Stoke Newington, which had stables and grounds of considerable size. From the negotiations for the marriage of his daughter Sophia it appears that he had landed property in more than one place, and he had obtained on lease in 1722 a considerable estate from the corporation of Colchester, which was settled on his unmarried daughter at his death. Other property was similarly allotted to his widow and remaining children, though some difficulty seems to have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom, for some purpose, the property was assigned during his father’s lifetime, and who refused to pay what was due.

There is a good deal of mystery about the end of Defoe’s life; it used to be said that he died insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death. As a matter of fact, after great suffering from gout and stone, he died in Ropemaker’s Alley, Moorfields, on Monday the 26th of April 1731, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. He left no will, all his property having been previously assigned, and letters of administration were taken out by a creditor.

How his affairs fell into this condition, why he did not die in his own house, and why in the previous summer he had been in hiding, as we know he was from a letter still extant, are points not clearly explained. He was, however, attacked by Mist, whom he wounded, in prison in 1724. It is most likely that Mist had found out that Defoe was a government agent and quite probable that he communicated his knowledge to other editors, for Defoe’s journalistic employment almost ceased about this time, and he began to write anonymously, or as “Andrew Moreton.” It is possible that he had to go into hiding to avoid the danger of being accused as a real Jacobite, when those with whom he had contracted to assume the character were dead and could no longer justify his attitude.

Defoe married, on New Year’s Day, 1684, Mary Tuffley, who survived until December 1732. They had seven children. His second son, Bernard or Benjamin Norton, has, like his father, a scandalous niche in the Dunciad. In April 1877 public attention was called to the distress of three maiden ladies, directly descended from Defoe, and bearing his name; and a crown pension of £75 a year was bestowed on each of them. His youngest daughter, Sophia, who married Henry Baker, left a considerable correspondence, now in the hands of her descendants. There are several portraits of Defoe, the principal one being engraved by Vandergucht.

Literary reputation

In his lifetime, Defoe, as not belonging to either of the great parties at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjected to obloquy on both sides. The great Whig writers leave him unnoticed. Swift and Gay speak slightingly of him, — the former, it is true, at a time when he was only known as a party pamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in the Dunciad towards the end of his life, but he confessed to Spence in private that Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a later period he was unjustly described as “a scurrilous party writer,” which he certainly was not; but, on the other hand, Johnson spoke of his writing “so variously and so well,” and put Robinson Crusoe among the only three books that readers wish longer. From Sir Walter Scott downwards the tendency to judge literary work on its own merits to a great extent restored Defoe to his proper place, or, to speak more correctly, set him there for the first time. Lord Macaulay’s description of Roxana, Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack as “utterly nauseous and wretched” must be set aside as a freak of criticism.

Scott justly observed that Defoe’s style “is the last which should be attempted by a writer of inferior genius; for though it be possible to disguise mediocrity by fine writing, it appears in all its naked inanity when it assumes the garb of simplicity.” The methods by which Defoe attains his result are not difficult to disengage. They are the presentment of all his ideas and scenes in the plainest and most direct language, the frequent employment of colloquial forms of speech, the constant insertion of little material details and illustrations, often of a more or less digressive form, and, in his historico-fictitious works, as well as in his novels, the most rigid attention to vivacity and consistency of character. Plot he disregards, and he is fond of throwing his dialogues into regular dramatic form, with by-play prescribed and stage directions interspersed. A particular trick of his is also to divide his arguments after the manner of the preachers of his day into heads and subheads, with actual numerical signs affixed to them. These mannerisms undoubtedly help and emphasize the extraordinary faithfulness to nature of his fictions, but it would be a great mistake to suppose that they fully explain their charm. Defoe possessed genius, and his secret is at the last as impalpable as the secret of genius always is.

Defoe’s Character

The character of Defoe, both mental and moral, is very clearly indicated in his works. He, the satirist of the true-born Englishman, was himself a model, with some notable variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did not see, and there was often no logical connexion whatever between his vision and his blindness. The most curious example of this inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to general principle, occurs in his Essay on Projects. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of life insurance, probably because it was then regarded as impious by religionists of his complexion.

But on either side of this refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows’ funds, which practically cover, in a clumsy and roundabout manner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it is evident that he was, according to his lights, a strictly honest and honourable man. But sentiment of any “high-flying” description — to use the cant word of his time — was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to be comprehended. He tells us with honest and simple pride that when his patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to follow Harley’s fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather blunt moral perception. One of the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her own fault, is drawn into certain breaches of definite moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or romantic was within Defoe’s view; he could not understand passionate love, ideal loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anything of the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as designed, not satire at all, but merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was a unit.

His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For driving the nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in The Drapier’s Letters. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe sees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant of everything which told against his own view.

The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works. The morality of these is almost amusing in its downright positive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the infinite intricacies of human nature. He is, in fact, an instance of the tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the English, to drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the taste, and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of wrong, wicked and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books.

Writings about Defoe

The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr. Towers in the Biographia Britannica . George Chalmers’s Life , however (1786), added very considerable information. In 1830 Walter Wilson wrote the standard Life (3 vols.); it is coloured by political prejudice, but is a model of painstaking care, and by its abundant citations from works both of Defoe and of others, which are practically inaccessible to the general reader, is invaluable.

In 1859 appeared a life of Defoe by William Chadwick, an extraordinary rhapsody in a style which is half Cobbett and half Carlyle, but amusing, and by no means devoid of acuteness. In 1864 the discovery of the six letters stirred up William Lee to a new investigation, and the results of this were published (London, 1869) in three large volumes. The first of these (well illustrated) contains a new life and particulars of the author’s discoveries. The second and third contain fugitive writings assigned by Lee to Defoe for the first time. For most of these, however, we have no authority but Lee’s own impressions of style, etc.; and consequently, though the best qualified judges will in most cases agree that Defoe may very likely have written them, it cannot positively be stated that he did.

There is also a Life by Thomas Wright (1894). The Earlier Life and Chief Earlier Works of Defoe (1890) was included by Henry Morley in the “Carisbrooke Library.” Charles Lamb’s criticisms were made in three short pieces, two of which were written for Wilson’s book, and the third for The Reflector. The volume on Defoe (1879) in the “English Men of Letters” series is by W. Minto.

Defoe collections

There is considerable uncertainty about many of Defoe’s writings; and even if all contested works be excluded, the number is still enormous. Besides the list in Bohn’s Lowndes , which is somewhat of an omnium gatherum, three lists drawn with more or less care were compiled in the 19th century. Wilson’s contains 210 distinct works, three or four only of which are marked as doubtful; Hazlitt’s enumerates 183 “genuine” and 52 “attributed” pieces, with notes on most of them; Lee’s extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. The reprint (3 vols.) edited for the “Pulteney Library” by Hazlitt in 1840–1843 contains a good and full life mainly derived from Wilson, the whole of the novels (including the Serious Reflections now hardly ever published with Robinson Crusoe ), Jure Divino , The Use and Abuse of Marriage , and many of the more important tracts and smaller works. There is also an edition, often called Scott’s, but really edited by Sir G. C. Lewis, in twenty volumes (London, 1840–1841). This contains the Complete Tradesman , Religious Courtship , The Consolidator and other works not comprised in Hazlitt’s. Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of the novels, in twelve volumes.

Bohn’s “British Classics” includes the novels (except the third part of Robinson Crusoe ), The History of the Devil , The Storm , and a few political pamphlets, also the undoubtedly spurious Mother Ross . In 1870 Nimmo of Edinburgh published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains Chalmers’s Life , annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee, Robinson Crusoe , pts. i. and ii., Colonel Jack , The Cavalier , Duncan Campbell , The Plague , Everybody’s Business, Mrs. Veal, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Giving Alms no Charity, The True-Born Englishman, Hymn to the Pillory, and very copious extracts from The Complete English Tradesman . An edition of Defoe’s Romances and Narratives in sixteen volumes by G. A. Aitken came out in 1895.

In addition to the principal authorities already mentioned see John Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays (1858); G. Saintsbury, “Introduction” to Defoe’s Minor Novels ; and valuable notes by G. A. Aitken in The Contemporary Review (February 1890), and The Athenaeum (April 30, 1889; August 31, 1890). A facsimile reprint (1883) of Robinson Crusoe has an introduction by Mr. Austin Dobson. Dr. Karl T. Bülbring edited two unpublished works of Defoe, The Compleat English Gentleman (London, 1890) and Of Royall Educacion (London, 1905), from British Museum Add. MS. 32,555. Further light was thrown on Defoe’s work as a political agent by the discovery (1906) of an unpublished paper of his in the British Museum by G. F. Warner. This was printed in the English Historical Review, and afterwards separately.

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Defoe's life is charged with the spirit of adventure. He was "ever a fighter;" and, although he was the most prolific English writer of his time, he was no scholarly recluse, but first and last a practical man, who took an active and not unimportant part in the daily work of the world. The spirited stories of life and adventure with which, towards the close of his career, he captivated his readers, were the work of one whose own experience was won outside the walls of a library or a university, one who had stood in the pillory, and had been two years in prison; who had owned a splendid mansion and kept his pleasure-boat and his coach; a man who had been at one time the trusted adviser of a grateful King, and at another an object of hatred, abuse, and contempt. He was one who could write of himself: 1 According to Defoe's estimate, eighty thousand copies of this poem were sold in the streets. 2 "This [the Review ] was his largest, if not his most important, work, embracing in over five thousand pages essays on almost every branch of human knowledge; during the same nine years he published eighty distinct works, with 4,727 pages."  Chambers's Cyclopedia of English Literature (new editions), vol. ii, p.150. 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Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented on anything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to academies for women, from security for the aged to the dangers of the plague. In his fiction he created a type of vivid realism that powerfully influenced the development of the novel. The publication of works such as Robinson Crusoe are major events because they shape the ways in which we see our world, so that ever afterwards thoughts of desolation and desert islands immediately evoke Defoe's masterpiece. From his earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour , to his Compleat English Gentleman , left unpublished at his death, Defoe was pre-eminently a creator of fictions. This life gives us a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that went into Robinson Crusoe , Moll Flanders , and Roxana . 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It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press Cookie settings Cookie policy Privacy policy Legal notice Biography of Daniel Defoe By the time he took up his pen to write Robinson Crusoe at about the age of fifty-eight, Daniel Defoe had a broader range of experiences behind him than most can claim in a lifetime. At one time or another he was a merchant, a manufacturer, an insurer of ships, a convict, a soldier, an embezzler, a spy, a fugitive, a political spokesman, and, of course, an author. He produced over five hundred works on politics, geography, crime, religion, superstition, marriage, and psychology. Many critics and historians consider him the first true novelist. Defoe's life was, to say the least, a strange one. He was born Daniel Foe to a family of Dissenters in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London; his exact birth date is unknown, but historians estimate the year to be either 1659 or 1660. Why he added the "De" to his surname is a subject of speculation; he might have decided to return to an original family name, or wanted to give himself a high-born cachet. In any event, in his mid-thirties he began signing his name as Defoe. James Foe, his father, a butcher by trade, was a sober, deeply pious Presbyterian of Flemish descent - one of perhaps twenty percent of the population that had relinquished ties to the main body of the Church of England. Very little is known of Defoe's childhood. However, it is reasonable to assume that, as the son of a Dissenter, much of his time was spent in religious observances. It is likely that this spurred the fervent belief in Divine Providence that is so evident in his writings. Since they were barred from Oxford and Cambridge universities, Dissenters sent their children to their own schools. Defoe's education began in the Rev. James Fisher's school in Dorking, and later, at about the age of fourteen, he was enrolled in the Dissenting academy in Newington Green. Newington's headmaster, Rev. Charles Morton, a plain-spoken Puritan, was a progressive educator (despite a belief in storks spending the winter on the moon). He gave his students a thorough grounding in English as well as the customary Greek and Latin. Morton is seen as a major influence on Defoe's writing style; another primary influence was the Bible. Although intended for the ministry, Defoe settled instead on a career as a commission agent. For more than a decade he traded in a wide range of goods, including stockings, wine, tobacco, and oysters. Defoe's love for trade permeated his writings. He wrote countless essays and pamphlets on economic theory which were advanced for his time. Indeed, had he taken his own advice, he would have been a wealthy man. While his years as a broker endowed him with insight into human nature, his risky and unscrupulous ventures (he was sued at least eight times, and once bilked his own mother-in-law out of four hundred pounds in a cat-breeding deal), combined with bad luck and faulty judgment, more often than not steered him into debt, deceit, and political double-dealing. Still, in his mind and heart, Defoe undoubtedly saw himself in the role of a solid, middle-class family man. He wrote numerous treatises which demonstrated that he considered himself an expert on most, if not all, family matters. However, his own marriage to Mary Tuffley, a merchant's daughter, despite its length of forty-seven years and fecundity of eight children, cannot be considered a model of matrimonial paradise. Defoe's unstable fortunes, his extended visits abroad, and his absence while a fugitive from enemies and creditors would have tried the patience of even the most patient, loving spouse. There is also evidence that, in spite of loving them deeply, Defoe alienated some, if not all of his children. A year after his marriage, Defoe took up arms as a Dissenter in Monmouth's failed rebellion against the Catholic King James II. Unlike three of his former classmates who were caught and sent to the gallows, Defoe narrowly missed the troops and hastened to safety in London. When the king was deposed, Daniel rode with the volunteer guard of honor that escorted William of Orange and his wife Mary into the city. Due mainly to losses incurred by insuring ships during a war with France, Defoe faced bankruptcy in 1692. With creditors hot on his trail he fled to a debtor sanctuary in Bristol, and from there was able to negotiate terms that spared him the humiliation of debtor's prison. Within ten years he had repaid most of what he owed. Unfortunately, Defoe never fully recovered from that fiasco. Debt would haunt him as long as he lived. This circumstance manifested itself in his ambivalent political actions and his prodigious output as a writer. He was able to win King William's favor, and was appointed Commissioner of the Glass Duty. He was put in charge of proceeds from a lottery and became the king's confidential advisor and leading pamphleteer. Defoe's fervent sense of justice often led him to tweak the noses of those in high places. His essay, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters , would bring him great grief. A satire that poked fun at the manner in which the Church and State dealt with Dissenters, it infuriated the powers that be and forced Defoe to go into hiding. He was betrayed by an informant and brought to trial for "seditious libel against the Church". He was jailed and sentenced to three days in the pillory, a manacle device that exposed a criminal to public ridicule. A pardon some months later from Queen Anne was hardly a chance to start over. Defoe's tile and brick business had fallen apart during his absence, and he once again faced debtor's prison. A grant of one thousand pounds from the Earl of Oxford allowed Defoe to climb out of debt and start his own newspaper, The Review . He trumpeted his own views and was frequently in trouble for them. After another libel arrest in 1715, Defoe spent his time covertly editing other newspapers as he worked on novels such as Robinson Crusoe , Roxana (1724), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), and Moll Flanders (1722). He died on April 24th, 1731 of a stroke and was buried in Bunhill Fields, a cemetery for Dissenters. His wife was buried with him on December 19th of that same year. Study Guides on Works by Daniel Defoe The consolidator daniel defoe. The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon, is a 1705 satirical fantasy/science fiction novel by English author Daniel Defoe, of Robinson Crusoe fame. As described by Karen Severud Cook in her article "Daniel... Study Guide An Essay Upon Projects Daniel Defoe An Essay Upon Projects was the very first work of literature to which Daniel Defoe publicly signed his name as author. Lacking neither ambition nor audaciousness, the essays lays out over the court of more 50,000 words a detailed and comprehensive... A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year is one of Daniel Defoe's most popular and strangest works; it is an amalgam of history and fiction that attempts to relate what life was like in London during the plague of 1665-66. Published in 1722, nearly 57 years... Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders, published in 1722, was one of the earliest English novels (the earliest is probably Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, published in 1688). Like many early novels, it is told in the first person as a narrative, and is presented as a truthful... Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe The adventures of Crusoe on his island, the main part of Defoe's novel, are based largely on the central incident in the life of an undisciplined Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk. Although it is possible, even likely that Defoe met Selkirk before he... Lesson Plan Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress Daniel Defoe The novel now known as Roxana was published in 1724; it is the third and last of Defoe's major novels, following Robinson Crusoe in 1719, and Moll Flanders in 1722. The original title was The Fortunate Mistress: Or, A History of the Life and Vast... General Literature Literary Biography The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography ISBN: 978-1-119-11800-8 Wiley-Blackwell John Richetti The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe’s writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe’s political, religious, moral, and economic journalism, as well as on all of his narrative fictions, including Robinson Crusoe Places emphasis on Defoe’s distinctive style and rhetoric Situates his work within the precise historical circumstances of the eighteenth-century in which Defoe was an important and active participant Now available in paperback A critical study of the writing of Daniel Defoe. Examines the entire range of his work in the context of what is known about his life. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe’s political and religious journalism, as well as on his narrative fictions. Places emphasis on Defoe’s distinctive style and rhetoric. Five Fascinating Facts about Daniel Defoe Fun facts about Daniel Defoe, one of Britain’s first novelists 1. He was born Daniel Foe. The French ‘De’ was a later affectation. Daniel Foe was born in around 1660, though the exact date is unknown. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665, an event he would later document in a work of part-fiction, part non-fiction, his  Journal of the Plague Year . During the Great Fire of London a year later, in 1666, Defoe was almost caught up in the blaze: of all the houses in his neighbourhood, only Defoe’s and two other houses remained standing. 2. Daniel Defoe fought on the side of the rebels at the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685.  And, when the rebel army was defeated, Defoe (or plain Foe as he then was) narrowly avoided being sentenced to hanging at the Bloody Assizes, presided over by none other than the infamous Judge Jeffreys. 4. He was put in the pillory for one of his seditious pamphlets.  In 1703, he was put in the pillory for writing a satirical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters , attacking the treatment of religious dissenters in England. But far from assaulting Defoe with stones and rotten fruit, the crowd reportedly threw flowers at the writer. They also chanted Defoe’s own ‘ Hymn to the Pillory ’ in support, and raised a glass to him. 5. Defoe wrote two sequels to  Robinson Crusoe.  As we reveal in our interesting facts about  Robinson Crusoe , the popularity of that novel led Defoe to write two follow-up books, published speedily after the original.  The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe followed later in the same year, with  Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe following a year later in 1720 (though this third book was little more than a collection of Defoe’s earlier works which was published under the Crusoe ‘brand’). The Farther Adventures sees Crusoe return to his island following the death of his wife in England; following the death of Man Friday, his faithful servant, he travels to Madagascar, the Far East, and Siberia, before returning to England ten years later. Defoe would write numerous other books besides  Robinson Crusoe and its sequels, including  Moll Flanders (1722) and  Roxana  (1724), as well as  Captain Singleton  (1720), about a man who is raised by gypsies and later becomes a pirate. He also wrote an early work of travel writing, A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, Divided into Circuits or Journies  (1724-7). He died in 1731, of a ‘lethargy’ – probably, in modern parlance, a stroke. He would become known to posterity as one of England’s first novelists. If you enjoyed these quick and interesting Defoe facts, we have more detail on his fascinating life in our short biography of Daniel Defoe . Image: Portrait of Daniel Defoe (author unknown),  public domain . Discover more from Interesting Literature Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… 7 thoughts on “Five Fascinating Facts about Daniel Defoe” I haven’t read it, but I think The Shortest Way… was a satire, so his time in the pillory was a mistake, hence the support he received whilst there. Indeed – the authorities failed to detect the satire and took what he’d written at face value! But wasn’t it anti non cons, which should have been pro the authorities? Sorry, yes – it also highlighted a few uncomfortable truths about the Tory government of the time and that is what contributed to Defoe’s arrest. You’re right: they would have applauded the (perceived) anti-non-conformist ‘message’! Tories! They miss a lot of jokes Pingback: Ten Interesting Posts of the Week (2/21/16) – Pages Unbound Pingback: Scurte #459 | Assassin CG Comments are closed. Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive. Continue reading 253 IMAGES Daniel Defoe Biography The biography of Daniel Defoe. His contribution in English literature Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe Biography of Daniel Defoe VIDEO Biography of Daniel Defoe The True Story Of Ronald DeFeo Jr. And The Amityville M-u-r-d-er #truecrime #amityvillehorror Daniel Defoe la sua storia chi ERA? #history #storia An Essay Upon Projects by Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe pilloried #fyp #fypシ #history #shorts British writer Daniel Defoe#uptgtpgt2024 #dsssb#lt #shorts COMMENTS Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe | English Novelist & Journalist Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe - Wikipedia ... Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe QUICK FACTS. Name: Daniel Defoe. Birth Year: 1660. Birth City: London. Birth Country: United Kingdom. Gender: Male. Best Known For: English novelist, pamphleteer and journalist Daniel Defoe is ... About Daniel Defoe Learn about the life and works of Daniel Defoe, a prolific and influential writer of the early eighteenth century. Explore his novels, essays, poems, and political tracts, as well as his involvement in the Anglo-Scottish union and the pillory. Daniel Defoe Biography. Defoe was born Daniel Foe, probably in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. Both the date and the place of his birth are uncertain. His father, James Foe, though a member of the Butchers' Company, was a tallow chandler. Daniel later added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the ... Daniel Defoe Biography Daniel Defoe Biography. Daniel Defoe was a survivor—and that's an understatement. He was young and vulnerable when an outbreak of the bubonic plague attacked England, killing hundreds of ... Daniel Defoe Learn about the life and achievements of Daniel Defoe, the English novelist, journalist, poet, and government agent. Explore his political and social tracts, his influential periodicals, and his famous novels such as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Daniel Defoe summary Daniel Defoe summary Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe - Novelist, Journalist, Satirist: With George I's accession (1714), the Tories fell. The Whigs in their turn recognized Defoe's value, and he continued to write for the government of the day and to carry out intelligence work. At about this time, too (perhaps prompted by a severe illness), he wrote the best known and most popular of his many didactic works, The Family ... Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Daniel Defoe Biography Learn about the English writer, journalist, and poet who wrote Robinson Crusoe and other novels. Explore his education, career, political views, and controversies in this comprehensive biography. The Interesting Life of Daniel Defoe Defoe had been born Daniel Foe - the French 'De' was a later affectation, used to make him sound 'more socially and upward sounding' and to suggest ties to a respected aristocratic family. He was born in around 1660, though we cannot know the date for certain. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665 which killed 100,000 people; it ... The Life of Daniel Defoe : A Critical Biography The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography. John Richetti. John Wiley & Sons, Aug 17, 2015 - Biography & Autobiography - 432 pages. The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe's writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe's political, religious ... Daniel Defoe Early Life. Daniel Defoe was born on the 3 rd of September, in 1660 in the city of London, England.He was a bright son of James Foe, a butcher by profession, and his mother, Annie, was a housewife. In his early years, he witnessed some of the unfortunate occurrences of history: The Great Plague of London and The Great Fire of London, which left only a handful of houses in his area. Daniel Defoe Biography Daniel Defoe Biography. Daniel Defoe (c. 1659-1731) was an English author and political pamphleteer born in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of 1659 or early in 1660, of a nonconformist family. Other spellings of his name include D. Foe, de Foe, or DeFoe. Daniel Defoe : Master of Fictions : His Life and Ideas Maximillian E. Novak. Oxford University Press, 2001 - Biography & Autobiography - 756 pages. Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times. Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel ... The Life of Daniel Defoe (c.1660-1731) Daniel Foe, or Defoe, as he afterwards called himself, was born in or about 1659, in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London. Socially, his position differed from that of his greatest contemporaries in literature. By inheritance and conviction he was a Dissenter in religion; by occupation he belonged to the trading, or merchant class. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Works Abstract. Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times.Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented on anything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to ... The Life of Daniel Defoe : A Critical Biography John Wiley & Sons, Jul 29, 2015 - Biography & Autobiography - 432 pages. The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe's writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe's political, religious, moral, and economic journalism, as well as on all of his ... Daniel Defoe Biography Defoe's life was, to say the least, a strange one. He was born Daniel Foe to a family of Dissenters in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London; his exact birth date is unknown, but historians estimate the year to be either 1659 or 1660. Why he added the "De" to his surname is a subject of speculation; he might have decided to return to an ... The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography AUD $199.95. O-Book. 978--470-75466-5. January 2008. Available on Wiley Online Library. Description. The Life of Daniel Defoeexamines the entire range of Defoe's writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions. Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe's political, religious, moral, and economic journalism ... Five Fascinating Facts about Daniel Defoe Five Fascinating Facts about Daniel Defoe. Fun facts about Daniel Defoe, one of Britain's first novelists. 1. He was born Daniel Foe. The French 'De' was a later affectation. Daniel Foe was born in around 1660, though the exact date is unknown. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665, an event he would later document in a work of part ... Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe | Biography, Books & Novels - Study.com assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis