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DEFOE, DANIEL (1660–1731)

DEFOE, DANIEL (1660–1731), English journalist, economist, and travel writer, often considered to be the first English novelist. Daniel Defoe wrote approximately 560 books, pamphlets, and journal articles, many of which were anonymously or pseudonymously published. Little is known about his early life other than that he was the first son of James Foe, a tallow chandler in the City of London (the family changed its name to Defoe c. 1695). The Foes were Puritans, and, because they were Dissenters (or Nonconformists), the 1662 Act of Uniformity forbade them to practice their religion or educate their children. Nevertheless, Daniel was schooled at Morton's Academy for Dissenters in Newington Green, North London, and considered becoming a Nonconformist minister himself before eventually deciding to follow his father into the City of London. He started his career as a hosiery merchant in 1681. He married Mary Tuffley c. 1683/1684, and in 1685 left London to join the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, probably fighting in the Battle of Sedgemoor. Defoe produced his first piece of published writing in 1688, a pamphlet denouncing the reigning monarch, James II (ruled 1685–1688).

With the accession of William of Orange in 1688 (William III; ruled 1688–1702), Defoe began a career as a political pamphleteer, but he also independently traded wine, spirits, tobacco, and textiles. His enterprises being unsuccessful, however, he was declared bankrupt in 1692, and was subsequently imprisoned in the Fleet and King's Bench Prisons for insolvency. Turning to pamphleteering for a living, in 1700 Defoe published "The True-Born Englishman," a satiric verse defending the Dutch King William III, and detailing England's multicultural past. Defoe was again imprisoned for six months in 1703 for another controversial pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with Dissenters," which ironically demanded the savage suppression of Nonconformists. In 1707 he began publishing the triweekly A Review of the State of the British Nation, which ran until 1713. Enjoying a busy career as a journalist, in 1704 he was employed by the secretary of state, Robert Harley, on a secret mission to tour England and Wales, ostensibly to report on the development of trade, but covertly to monitor and report back on any cells of Jacobite rebellion. During this period of traveling, Defoe gathered material for his extraordinary travel book, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (3 vols., 1724), which describes the people, places, and trades of the nation in great detail (though sections of the text were plagiarized from earlier travel books). The Tour was supplemented in 1746 with a Tour thro' that Part of Great-Britain called Scotland.

Defoe's first foray into fiction came in 1719 when, at the age of sixty, he anonymously published Robinson Crusoe, which describes the life of a shipwrecked mariner, to some extent based on the real-life experiences of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk. Robinson Crusoe was an immediate success for Defoe, and its publication initiated a prolific period of fiction writing including Captain Singleton (1720), an adventure story, and, in 1722, Defoe's second success, Moll Flanders, which purported to be an autobiography of a resourceful pick-pocket who lived in London and on the plantations of Virginia. Also in 1722 Defoe published The History of Peter the Great, Colonel Jack, and the historical fiction, A Journal of the Plague Year, which claimed to be an eyewitness account of events during the 1664–1665 Great Plague in London. In 1724 Defoe published his last, and possibly his darkest, fiction, Roxana, whose eponymous, tragic heroine dies in a debtors' prison after living a life of deception, which Defoe suggests was the result of her marrying a profligate man who abandoned her and their children. Defoe's fiction, which often drew on his own experiences of speculative enterprise, being in debt, and struggling to reconcile real life with a spiritual life, blended spiritual autobiography, journalism, and travel writing, and was original for its realistic subject matter and powerful, plain prose. Often regarded as the first novelist, Defoe certainly set a pattern for similar fiction writing, especially the novels of mid-century writers Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne.

In his final years, Defoe published two economic texts, The Complete English Tradesman (1725) and Augusta Triumphans: A Plan of the English Commerce (1728). Ironically, despite his personal interest in trade, and his successes as a bestselling pamphleteer and writer of fiction, Defoe died in poverty in his lodgings in Ropemaker's Alley, in Moorfields, London.

See also Dissenters, English; English Literature and Language; Fielding, Henry; Jacobitism; James II (England); Richardson, Samuel; Smollett, Tobias; Sterne, Laurence; William and Mary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Defoe, Daniel. The Complete English Tradesman (1725). 2 vols. 2nd ed. New York, 1969.

——. The Englishman's Choice, and True Interest. 1694. Ann Arbor, Mich. [On-line.] Available: http://www.lib.umich.edu/eebo/projdes/pddefoe.html.

——. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Edited by G. A. Starr. London, 1981.

——. The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Edited by C. H. Irwin. London, 1925.

——. The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jack. Edited by Samuel Holt Monk. London, 1965.

——. History of the Union of Great Britain. 1709. In Writings on Travel, Discovery, and History. 2 sets of 4 vols., edited by W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank. London, 2001–2002.

——. A Journal of the Plague Year: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Contexts, Criticism. Edited by Paula R. Backscheider. New York, 1992.

——. The Letters of Daniel Defoe. Edited by George Harris Healy. Oxford, 1955.

——. The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton. Edited by Shiv K. Kumar. Oxford, 1969.

——. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Edited by Donald J. Crowley. Oxford, 1972; repr. 1999.

——. Romances and Narratives by Daniel Defoe. Edited by George Atherton Aitken. 16 vols. London, 1895.

——. Roxana, the Fortunate Mistress. Edited by John Mullan. Oxford, 1996.

——. Selected Poetry and Prose of Daniel Defoe. Edited by M. F. Shugrue. New York, 1968.

——. The Shortest-Way with Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. 1702. Harvard Classics. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay. [On-line.] Available: http://www.bartleby.com/27/12.html.

——. A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain. Edited by P. N. Furbank, W. R. Owens, and A. J. Coulson. New Haven and London, 1991.

Secondary Sources

Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: Ambition and Innovation. Lexington, Ky., 1986.

——. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore, 1989.

Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. Oxford and New York, 2001.

——. Defoe and the Nature of Man. Oxford, 1963.

Rogers, Pat, ed. Daniel Defoe: The Critical Heritage. London, 1972; repr. 1995.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. London, 1957.

ALISON STENTON