In his own time, Daniel Defoe was known
primarily as a journalist, pamphleteer, and social commentator from the merchant
class. From 1688 to 1731, he wrote hundreds of essays on diverse topics,
including religion, politics, history, trade, crime, and marriage. His
pioneering work in the field of periodical publication has earned him the title
"father of modern journalism." But it is another title that signifies his
importance in the annals of English literature: "father of the English novel."
His novels Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana are still
studied and enjoyed to this day. And his first novel has become one of the
classics of world literature, for adults and for children alike. That book is
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York,
Mariner, more commonly known as Robinson Crusoe.
Defoe was born into a turbulent period of
English history, marked by a back and forth struggle to establish new frameworks
for political and religious authority. The parliament had begun to assert itself
more in the political arena once reserved for monarchs. The English Civil War of
the 1640s had ended in the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a
republic under Oliver Cromwell. Nonconformists had begun to assert themselves
against the power of the state church. But 1660, the year Defoe is believed to
have been born, saw the pendulum of social change swing back toward monarchy and
church authority. Dissatisfied with the state of England under Cromwell's
successor, his son Richard, a Convention Parliament invited Charles II to
reestablish the throne stripped from his father. To consolidate his power,
Charles reduced religious tolerance. Two major natural disasters, the Great
Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, also disrupted life in the London of
Defoe's childhood.
The young Daniel Foe, his name at birth,
experienced the effects of these social tremors. The Foes were a family of
Flemish descent; they were also among the Dissenters, a Protestant sect that
refused to conform to the doctrines and organization of the Church of England.
As one-time immigrants and nonconformists, they would have experienced
discrimination and persecution from time to time. But James Foe, Daniel's
father, was also a successful tradesman and merchant. The measure of prosperity
that he had achieved enabled him to send his son to fine schools; his religious
beliefs and the general prejudice against them dictated that he send the boy to
special schools for Dissenters. Defoe studied first at the Reverend James
Fisher's school at Dorking, Surrey. He later studied for the Presbyterian
ministry at Charles Morton's Academy in Newington Green,
Middlesex.
Despite his schooling, it was the commercial rather than the religious aspect of his father's life that most attracted Defoe. By 1683, he had established himself as a merchant in Cornhill, London. True to his social station and ambition, he married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of another successful Dissenting merchant. Off and on for the rest of his life, Defoe would work as a businessman in England and Scotland. In his career, he sold stockings, speculated in land, expeditions, and inventions, imported goods from the continent and New World, and operated brick and tile works. He was at times successful, at others careless, and often unfortunate. By 1703, his business dealings had forced him to suffer several lawsuits, two terms in prison, and two bankruptcies.
<!--pagebreak-->Defoe had turned to business instead of the ministry, but he had not abandoned his religious convictions; they pulled him into the social and political arena. In 1685, James II succeeded his older brother as king. The new king had converted to Catholicism a few years earlier and many in England, especially among the Dissenters, expected to lose religious privileges. For this reason, there was a substantial opposition to the crown. Defoe was a part of that opposition. In June of 1685, he travelled to Lyme Regis on the southwest coast of England to join a rebellion led by the illegitimate son of Charles II, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth. The rebellion failed, but three years later the Glorious Revolution under William of Orange succeeded in deposing James. For his participation in this revolution Defoe was awarded a number of positions in the service of William and his queen Mary between 1689 and 1702.
During the reign of Anne, who followed
William and Mary, Parliament continued to gain more control over the social and
political life of England. Defoe's public service followed that power. From 1703
to 1714, he served as an agent for Robert Harley, a leading Tory member of
Parliament and a cabinet member. Among his more intriguing duties on Harley's
behalf was to pose as a businessman in various towns in England and Scotland in
order to spy, conduct polls, and influence opinion. Of special importance to
Harley was the campaign underway to unite England and Scotland, a campaign which
eventually succeeded through the 1707 Act of
Union.
Defoe's writing career was a natural
outgrowth of his commercial, political, and religious activities. He wrote his
first significant pamphlet in 1688 to protest the policies of James II. By the
time Anne had assumed the English throne in 1702, Defoe had written several
political pieces and published more than ten lengthy pamphlets and satiric
poems. At first his writings criticized James and the Church of England and
later defended William and the importance of British commerce. In The
True-Born Englishman, a satiric poem published to great popularity in 1701,
Defoe dismissed the racism and xenophobia of the time by revealing the extent to
which England had been settled and built by immigrants. In political tracts such
as The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, he
asserted the right of the people to govern. In Legion's Memorial, he
argued that Englishmen should be free from tyranny by king or by
parliament.
Defoe achieved widespread notoriety in 1703 with the publication of The Shortest Way with Dissenters, a satire in support of religious freedom. At the time the House of Lords was debating a bill that would have a profound effect on this issue. To expose the extremism and bias of Church of England officials, Defoe wrote the piece from the point of view of a member of the High Church. Anglican extremists accepted Defoe's fictitious clergyman as a champion of their views. Dissenters were outraged. When the concocted sermon was revealed as satire, however, no one laughed, especially those caught with their extremism exposed. Defoe was charged with libel, found guilty, heavily fined, and imprisoned. He was also sentenced to spend from July 29 to 31, 1703, in the pillory, exposed to public scorn and ridicule. However, as Maximillian E. Novak writes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "instead of being abject, he composed what may be his best poem, A Hymn to the Pillory, in which he makes the pillory a sign of honor in a corrupt society. Copies of the poem were sold to the crowd as he was put in the 'state machine, / Contrived to punish fancy in,' and instead of being stoned to death, he was cheered wildly by the crowd."
<!--pagebreak-->In February of 1704, Defoe created the journal, A Review of the Affairs of France, with Observations on Transactions at Home. The Review, as it became known, was a forum for Defoe's views on contemporary politics, economics, religion, morality, and journalism. He produced the journal two to three times per week for almost a decade, laying it to rest in June of 1713. During that period he sowed the seeds for modern journalism, exploring the issues of the day through reporting and commentary while including poetry, letters to the editor, advice columns, and schedules for local events. He became known among his contemporaries as "Mr. Review" and was personally proud of his accomplishments. "I cannot but own myself infinitely pleased, and more than satisfied, that wise men read this paper with pleasure, own the just observations in it, and voted it useful," he is quoted in The Life and Times of Daniel Defoe.
A businessman, social activist, and
journalist already, Defoe did not assume his most famous role until he was
almost sixty years old. On April 25, 1719, he wrote himself into the history of
the English novel when his The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner was published in London by William Taylor.
Here for the first time, Defoe fully revealed his skills as a fiction writer,
skills he had previously honed on satires and mock biographies. The book, known
today simply as Robinson Crusoe, is considered by some the first true
English novel and by others the immediate precursor to the novels of Samuel
Richardson and Henry Fielding. Defoe's contemporaries spent no time squabbling
over whether or not the book represented a new literary form, however; what they
did was read the book in great numbers. This story of a castaway on an island
off the northern coast of South America was an immediate success. Taylor
published a total of six printings in 1719 alone. "The widespread appeal of
Crusoe's story is further evidenced by the publication of an abridged piracy by
T. Cox in early August," writes Michael Shinagel in the Norton Critical Edition
of Robinson Crusoe, "and by the serialization starting on October 7,
thrice weekly, in the Original London Post." It was even parodied by one
of Defoe's contemporary critics.
Defoe did not invent the story of a castaway
on a deserted island. He lived in an age of sea voyages to the distant lands of
Asia and the Americas and many true stories of marooned voyagers circulated
during his lifetime. The most famous of these was the account of Alexander
Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was left on an island off the coast of Chile to
fend for himself from 1704 to 1709. Though inspired perhaps by real experiences
such as Selkirk's and though presented as a true story, Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe is very much a work of its author's
imagination.
Robinson Crusoe is the son of a successful English merchant who rejects the life of his family in favor of a life of adventure at sea. After a number of adventures, including a violent storm, capture by pirates, sale into slavery, and escape, Crusoe journeys to Brazil where he establishes a plantation. Because of the success of his venture, he decides to travel to Africa to secure some slaves. While sailing off the coast of South America, Crusoe's ship encounters a hurricane and experiences damage. Before the expedition can reach the refuge of an English outpost in the Caribbean, it is hit by a second storm which drives it toward the coast of what is now Venezuela. In a shipwreck all hands are lost except for Crusoe, who manages to battle the furious waves until at last he is safe on land, an island off the mouth of the Orinoco River. When the storm abates the following day, Crusoe is able to salvage provisions from the grounded ship using a raft he fashions himself. In the remainder of the book, Crusoe recounts his personal struggles to survive and to cope with his isolation during his twenty-eight years on the island.
<!--pagebreak-->Readers of Defoe's story Robinson Crusoe have found many things within its pages. Crusoe has been seen as a representative of mankind at struggle with nature, or religion, or himself. Karl Marx and others have found much to do with the economic nature of man in Crusoe's experience on the island. The psychiatrist Eric Berne, in an essay reprinted in Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe, has called the book "one of the most detailed accounts in any literature of the psychological process of organizing space." At the time it was published Defoe's public, "the middle and lower classes," as James Sutherland points out in his study of the author, Defoe, "got an epic entirely after its own heart, with a hero it could understand and admire because he was taken from its own ranks." Sutherland continues that "Crusoe may be all Mankind in difficulties, but he is first of all an Englishman of the lower middle classes making the best of things." James Joyce also recognizes Crusoe as a model of the Englishman. In a lecture he gave in Italy, quoted in the Norton Critical Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the Irish author comments that "the whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity."
But, while the adult reactions to
Robinson Crusoe have gone through a variety of phases, including ignoring
it altogether, children have continued to hold the story in high esteem since
soon after it was published. Its appeal for children, as Sutherland comments,
comes from "the human delight in making things," the satisfaction of "making
things do," and "the delight of unexpectedly discovering things." The authors of
A Critical History of Children's Literature also believe that the
episodic narrative "is a form directly natural for children's liking, with no
confusing complication of structure, with effortless unity of place and
character, and, above all, with vividness of dealing with natural things and
natural adventure." Moreover, Crusoe is very much a character with which
children can identify, these reviewers suggest. "What he did, though he
accomplished wonders," they write, "was done as slowly, as laboriously and
clumsily as any ordinary boy would do it, with the constant danger of utter
failure." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher and writer, writes in
Emile that Robinson Crusoe should be the first and most important
book in the natural education of each child.
PERSONAL
INFORMATION
Education: Studied at the Reverend James
Fisher's school at Dorking, Surrey, England; studied for the Presbyterian
ministry at Charles Morton's Academy in Newington Green, Middlesex, England.
CAREER
Journalist, pamphleteer, social and political commentator, and novelist; some of his religious and political writings led to arrests for libel and treason, fines, imprisonments, and one pillorying, from July 29-31, 1703. Merchant in Cornhill, London, England, 1683; businessman in England in the hosiery and brick- and tile-making trades, an investor in English land, ships, voyages, a diving bell, and a perfume concern, and a trader in tobacco and wines, 1685-92; proprietor of brick and tile works, Tilbury, Essex, England, 1703; failed business dealings during this period led to several lawsuits, two imprisonments, and two bankruptcies. Joined the Duke of Monmouth in Lyme Regis, England, in an unsuccessful rebellion against King James II to establish a Protestant monarchy, 1685; participated in the Glorious Revolution in which William of Orange deposed James II and accepted the throne as William III together with his wife Mary II, 1688-89; served the king in various capacities in England and Scotland, 1689-1702; secretary in the Glass Duty Office, 1695. Agent for Robert Harley, a member of parliament and secretary of state, 1703-14, working as a propagandist, opinion pollster, and spy in England and Scotland.
<!--pagebreak-->WORKS
NOVELS
The Life and Strange
Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, W. Taylor, 1719,
published as The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of
York, Mariner, Robert Bell, 1776, published as Robinson Crusoe,
illustrated by N. C. Wyeth, Running Press, 1991.
The Farther Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe: Being the Second and Last Part of His Life, W. Taylor, 1719.
Memoirs of a Cavalier; or, A
Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England, from
1632-1648, A. Bell, 1720, reprinted,
Oxford University Press, 1991.
The Life, Adventures, and
Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, J. Brotherton, 1720,
reprinted, Oxford University Press, 1990.
Serious Reflections during
the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, with His Vision of the
Angelick World, W. Taylor, 1720.
The Fortunes and Misfortunes
of the Famous Moll Flanders, W. Chetwood & T.
Edling, 1722, reprinted, Oxford University Press, 1981, published as Moll
Flanders, Knopf, 1991.
A Journal of the Plague
Year: Being Observations or Memorials, of the Most Remarkable Occurrences, as
Well Publick as Private, Which Happened in London during the Last Great
Visitation in 1665, Written by a Citizen Who Continued All the While in
London, E. Nutt, 1722, reprinted,
Oxford University Press, 1990.
The History and Remarkable
Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly Call'd Colonel
Jack, J. Brotherton, 1723,
reprinted, Oxford University Press, 1989.
The Fortunate Mistress; or,
A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau,
Afterwards Call'd the Countess de Wintelsheim, in Germany, Being the Person
Known by the Name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles
II, T. Warner, 1724, published
as Roxana, Viking, 1982.
The Memoirs of an English
Officer, E. Symon, 1728, reprinted,
Gollancz, 1970, also published as Memoirs of Captain George Carleton.
POEMS
A New Discovery of an Old
Intreague, [London], 1691.
The True-Born
Englishman, [London], 1700.
The
Pacificator, J. Nutt, 1700.
Reformation of Manners, [London], 1702.
<!--pagebreak-->The Mock Mourners, [London], 1702.
A Hymn to the
Pillory, [London], 1703.
More Reformation: A Satyr
upon Himself, [London], 1703.
A Hymn to
Victory, J. Nutt, 1704.
The Dyet of Poland: A
Satyr, [London], 1705.
The Vision, B. Bragg, 1706.
Caledonia: A Poem in Honour
of Scotland, and the Scots Nation, the Heirs and Successors of
Andrew Anderson, 1706.
Jure Divino: A
Satyr, [London], 1708.
The Meditations of Daniel
Defoe, edited by George H. Healey,
printed from the text of a handwritten notebook dated 1681, Commington Press,
1946, reprinted, Folcroft, 1970.
HISTORIES
The History of the Kentish
Petition, [London], 1701.
The Storm; or, A Collection
of the Most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters Which Happen'd in the Late
Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land, G. Sawbridge, 1704.
The History of the Union of
Great Britain, the Heirs and Successors of
Andrew Anderson, 1709.
A History of the Wars, of
His Present Majesty Charles XII, King of Sweden... by a Scots Gentleman in the
Swedish Service, A. Bell, 1715, expanded
edition, 1720.
An Historical Account of the
Voyages and Adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh, with the Discoveries and Conquests
He Made for the Crown of England, W. Boreham, 1720.
A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, C. Rivington, volume 1,
1724, volume 2: The History of the Pyrates, 1728.
A General History of
Discoveries and Improvements, four parts, J. Roberts,
1725-26.
The Political History of the
Devil, as Well Ancient as Modern, two parts, T. Warner, 1726,
reprinted, Rowman & Littlefield, 1972.
A System of Magick; or, A
History of Black Art, J. Roberts, 1726.
An Essay on the History and
Reality of Apparitions, A. Millar, 1727, reprinted,
AMS Press, 1973.
ECONOMIC
TREATISES
A Tour thro' the Whole
Island of Great Britain, three volumes, G. Strahan,
1724-27, reprinted, Garland Publishing, 1975, abridged edition, Yale University
Press, 1991.
The Royal
Progress, J. Darby, 1724.
The Complete English
Tradesman, two volumes, C. Rivington,
1725- 27, reprinted, Alan Sutton, 1989.
A Plan of the English
Commerce, C. Rivington, 1728,
reprinted, Kelley, 1967.
Atlas Maritimus and
Commercialis; or, A General View of the World, so far as It Relates to Trade and
Navigation, James & John Knapton,
1728.
_______________
Source: Gale
Group.
