Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, is most famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), a story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island. Along with Samuel Richardson, Defoe is considered the founder of the English novel.

Defoe was born as the son of James Foe, a butcher of Stroke Newington. He studied at Charles Morton's Academy, London. Although his Nonconformist father intended him for the ministry, Defoe plunged into politics and trade, traveling extensively in Europe. In the early 1680s Defoe was a commission merchant in Cornhill but went bankrupt in 1691. In 1684 he married Mary Tuffley; they had two sons and five daughters.

Defoe earned fame and royal favor with his satirical poem "The True born Englishman" (1701). In 1702 Defoe wrote his famous pamphlet The Shortest Way With Dissenters . Himself a Dissenter he mimicked the extreme attitudes of High Anglican Tories and pretended to argue for the extermination of all Dissenters. Nobody was amused; Defoe was arrested and pilloried in May 1703. While in prison Defoe wrote a mock ode, "Hymn To The Pillory" (1703). The poem was sold in the streets, the audience drank to his health while he stood in the pillory and read aloud his verses.

When the Tories fell from power Defoe continued to carry out intelligence work for the Whig government. In his own days Defoe was regarded as an unscrupulous, diabolical journalist.

Defoe was one of the first to write stories about believable characters in realistic situations using simple prose. He achieved literary immortality when in April 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, which was based partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways, such as Alexander Selkirk. During the remaining years, Defoe concentrated on books rather than pamphlets. Among his works are Moll Flanders(1722), A Journal Of The Plague Year (1722) and Captain Jack(1722) His last great work of fiction, Roxana, appeared in 1724. In the 1720s Defoe had ceased to be politically controversial in his writings, and he produced several historical works, a guide book and The Great Law Of Subordination Considered (1724), an examination of the treatment of servants.

Phenomenally industrious, Defoe produced in his last years also works involving the supernatural, The Political History Of The Devil (1726) and An Essay On The History And Reality Of Apparitions(1727). He died on 26 April 1731, at his lodgings in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields.

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