INTRODUCTION
The art of pamphleteering throve mightly in the 17th and 18th centuries.Essentially vit had little in common with the classical dignity and magnificence that characterized nobler forms of writing; it was perhaps the reverse side of the tapestry. In the 18th century the pamphlet supplemented the newspaper; arguments, that is, that were too long for the single folio sheets or half-sheets that then constituted newspapers, dilated in independent publications of moderate size. The newspaper itself took on life after 1695 when the Licensing Act lapsed. Not that the lapsing of this act made journalism a safe profession: it long remained anonymous and furtive employment. Immediatly in 1695 the Tories founded an "organ", The Post-Boy (1695-1735), edited at first by Abel Roper; and the Whigs countered with their Flying-Post (1695-1731) , long presided over by George Ridpath. The Post-Man (1965-1730) was also Whig in bias. Few newspapers of the day lived as long as these; journals were born to argue over a crisis, and they ceased when new topics came into play. The first successful daily, The Daily courant (1702-35), published by Samuel Buckley, was during its early and prosperous existence a commercial sheet of Whig tendencies that grew violent later.
defoe and Journalism
Defoe was futhermore well-informed in the history of modern europe, and his geographical knowledge was far from contemptible. His intellect was eager, retentive, far.ranging, shrewd, and ingenious: what he lacked was a just and tenacious adherence to honest dealing in practical matters.
Defoe, as a dissenter, a writer for hire, and a ironist, seems usually to have been in danger. He began as a satirical political poet;and by the time(1703) when he first collected his works, he had produced several poems of this kind. His most effective and popular verse was the True-Born Englishmen (1701), which defended William III against the prejudices of such subjects as disliked the King's Dutch origin or Dutch advisers.
His Shortest way to the Dissenters(1702) he had conceived as a playful ironic attack on the extreme High Church people who believed that "if the Gallows instead of the Counter, and the Gallies instead of the Fines, were the Reward of going toa Conventicle, to preach or hear, there would not be so many Sufferers". Defoe's irony here backfired: both dissenters and churchmen were offended, and the government ordered his arrest. After successfully hiding for over four months, he was taken, tried, and condemned to pay a heavy fine and to stand in the pillory three times.He composed a Hymn to the Pillory, which sold well during his exposure.
After 1715 he was connected with various papers, among which Mercurius Politicus (1716-20), The Daily Post (1719-25), Applebee's Weekly Journal (1720-26), and dormer's News-Letter(1716-18) mark, with one exception, his principal periods and places of journalistic employment. The exception is significant. In 1717 he was reputed Tory secretly placed by the Whig ministry on the staff of the Tory-Jacobite Weekly Journal; or Saturday's Post,publised by Nathaniel Mist. It was task to moderate the fury of this jouranlistic storm-center, and until 1724 he had some success in the attempt: in all such government jobs he was likely to be acting a part- and not to sincerely. More than once he was writing for both Wigh and Tory journals at the same time. Just after Robinson Crusoe (1719), he began work on Applebee's Journal, writng strories about Jack sheppard and other criminals which led him into the genre of criminal biography.
Most of Defoe longer works were in part related to his journalism orto his love "projects". That he wrote his longer stories at all was probably due to the unexpectedly great success of Robinson Crusoe, the first part of which wasa fictional grafting upon the story of Alexander Selkirk, who had lived alone on Juan Fernandez from 1704-1709, and whose return to England in 1711 had caused the publication of many narratives of his history.
Defoe's masterpiece was aclaimed at once, and when four editions were called for within four months, he followed it with a second volume of Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which was not worthy of the first.
A modern novelist would focus on the horrors of isolation, the loneliness of Crusoe's island; for Defoe these things hardly existed: his mind was on the God-given power of sinful man to win through-and on the human ingenuity that embellishes the effort.This success led rapidly to other long narratives, produced with a speed almost unaccountable if we consider that addition to books he was turning out newspaper leaders and pamphlets in quantity. During 1720, he published:
-The Memoirs of a Cavallier- Captain Singleton _ _ another voyage story with pirates featured
-Serious Reflections-- of Crusoe
During 1722, he published:
-Moll Flanders-- she was the victim of a society and of the Devil, born in Newgate of bad blood that cuold come to no good.-Due Preparations for the Plague
-Religious Courtship
-A Journal of the Plague Year-- the details are so living and horrible as to seem the plausible momories of an eye-witness rather than the work of an author who was only 5 years old when in 1665 the plague ravaged London.-Colonel Jacque
-Roxana (1724)
-Captain George Carleton (1728)