Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731

Daniel Defoe is perhaps best known for his novels, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, but he was also the quintessential "brilliant scoundrel" of the Augustan Age. In rough chronological order, Daniel Defoe was a hosier, soldier, wine merchant, factory owner, bankrupt, spy, pamphleteer, convict, journalist, editor, political flunkey, hack writer and novelist. 

In 1704, he launched the Review of the Affairs of France and of all Europe, one of the first serious political and economic newspapers in England (it folded in the aftermath of the 1712 Stamp Act).  He served as editor on several other newspapers later.  As a trader and non-conformist, Defoe's produced several political and social commentaries hailing the dawn of the bourgeois-capitalist age.

In the service of Robert Harley, a shadowy figure of Queen Anne's reign, Defoe's produced a detailed three-volume (1724-7) account of the economic, political and social conditions of the cities and country-sides of Great Britain. His talent was dissipated in later years when, as a political journalist, he compromised his independence as a reporter in return for political favours.

Major Works of Daniel Defoe

• A Letter to a Dissenter from his Friend at the Hague, 1688
• Essay on Projects, 1697
• True Born Englishman: A Satyr, 1701.
• The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, 1702.
• Hymn to the Pillory, 1703
• A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal, 1705
• The Consolidator, 1705
• Giving Alms No Charity, 1704.
• Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business
• The Family Instructor, 1715
• Dickory Cronke, the Dumb Philosopher, 1719
• On the Education of Women, 1719
• The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719.
• The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719
• The Life of Captain Singleton, 1720.
• Memoirs of a Cavalier, 1720 
• The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, 1722.
• Colonel Jack, 1722.
• Tour Through Eastern Counties of England, 1722
• From London to Land's End
• Journal of the Plague Year, 1722.
• Roxana, 1724
• The Great Law of Subordination Considered, 1724.
• A General History of the Robberies and Murder of the Most Notorious Pyrates (attrib.), 1724-8
• A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-7.
• The Complete English Tradesman, 1725-7.
• The Political History of the Devil, 1726
• An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, 1727
• London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe, 1728
• The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, 1729

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