Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe in the pillory, 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe
Memorial to "Daniel De-Foe", Bunhill Fields, City Road, Borough of Islington, London
A house near London, England, where Defoe once lived
(The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from ...)
The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon is a satirical novel that mixes fantasy with political and social satire. The narrator travels to the moon mostly to get a dispassionate and crushingly granular view of recent and contemporary British political history.
https://www.amazon.com/Consolidator-Fantasy-Classic-Daniel-Defoe-ebook/dp/B0722VT92D
1705
(Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor maroon...)
Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor marooned on a desert island for nearly three decades. An ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances, Robinson Crusoe wrestles with fate and the nature of God.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0141439823/?tag=2022091-20
1719
(Large format for easy reading. The life, adventures and p...)
Large format for easy reading. The life, adventures and piracies of a young man, the book portrays the redemptive power of one man's love for another. By the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
https://www.amazon.com/Captain-Singleton-Daniel-Defoe/dp/1406502308
1720
(Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published...)
Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll, detailing her exploits from birth until old age.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140433139/?tag=2022091-20
1722
(In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles...)
In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles the progress of the epidemic. We follow his fictional narrator through a city transformed-the streets and alleyways deserted, the houses of death with crosses daubed on their doors, the dead-carts on their way to the pits-and encounter the horrified citizens of the city, as fear, isolation, and hysteria take hold.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0775VC7C3/?tag=2022091-20
1722
(Colonel Jack follows an orphaned boy from a life of pover...)
Colonel Jack follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty and crime to colonial prosperity, military and marital imbroglios, and religious conversion, driven by a problematic notion of becoming a "gentleman."
https://www.amazon.com/COLONEL-JACK-Illustrated-Remarkable-Complemented-ebook/dp/B071L6MXZQ
1722
(Roxana, Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiogra...)
Roxana, Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune. Its narrator tells the story of her own "wicked" life as the mistress of rich and powerful men.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199536740/?tag=2022091-20
1724
(On the evening of 26th November 1703, a cyclone from the ...)
On the evening of 26th November 1703, a cyclone from the north Atlantic hammered into southern Britain at over seventy miles an hour, claiming the lives of over 8,000 people. Eyewitnesses reported seeing cows left stranded in the branches of trees and windmills ablaze from the friction of their whirling sails. For Defoe, bankrupt and just released from prison for seditious writings, the storm struck during one of his bleakest moments. But it also furnished him with the material for his first book, and in his powerful depiction of private suffering and individual survival played out against a backdrop of public calamity we can trace the outlines of his later masterpieces such as A Journal of the Plague Year and Robinson Crusoe.
https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Penguin-Classics-Daniel-Defoe-ebook/dp/B002RI9HSY
1724
(Irreverent and ironic, this 1726 satire by the author of ...)
Irreverent and ironic, this 1726 satire by the author of Robinson Crusoe examines the evolution of evil and the rise of the historical force known as "the devil."
https://www.amazon.com/Political-History-Devil-Daniel-Defoe/dp/048680237X
1726
(34 Complete Works of Daniel Defoe Including Moll Flanders...)
34 Complete Works of Daniel Defoe Including Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, Fortunate Mistress, Dickory Cronke.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Including-Flanders-Robinson-Fortunate-ebook/dp/B00SELXOI2
1840
(Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction ...)
Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction that is both informative and imaginative, reliable and entertaining. To the tradition of travel writing Daniel Defoe brings a lifetime's experience as a businessman, soldier, economic journalist and spy, and his Tour is an invaluable source of social and economic history.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140430660/?tag=2022091-20
1924
Daniel Foe was probably born in Fore Street in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. His birthdate is uncertain, and sources offer dates from 1659 to 1662, with the summer or early autumn of 1660 considered the most likely. Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding "De" to his name, and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. His father James Foe was a prosperous tallow chandler and a member of the Butchers' Company.
Defoe early thought of becoming a Presbyterian minister, and in the 1670s he attended the Reverend Charles Morton's famous academy near London.
Initially planning to become a dissenting minister, Defoe gave up on the same to pursue business. He started as a general merchant selling hosiery stuffs, woollen goods and wine. Meanwhile, keeping up with his interest in politics, he published his first literary piece in 1683, which was a political pamphlet. Working as a journalist, he published several pieces which supported the King William.
Defoe participated briefly in the abortive Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 but escaped capture and punishment. In 1689 he paraded into London as a volunteer trooper in the triumphal procession of William and Mary to a banquet at the Guildhall. Defoe evidently knew King William III; indeed, his bankruptcy in 1692 for the enormous sum of £17, 000 was primarily because of losses suffered from underwriting marine insurance for the King. Although he settled with his creditors in 1693, he was plagued by the threat of bankruptcy throughout his life and faced imprisonment for debt and libel seven times.
Arrested in 1703 for having published The Shortest Way with the Dissenters in 1702, Defoe was tried and sentenced to stand in the pillory for 3 days in July. He languished in Newgate Prison, however, until Robert Walpole released him in November and offered him a post as a government agent.
Defoe continued to serve the government as journalist, pamphleteer, and secret agent for the remainder of his life. The most long-lived of his 27 periodicals, the Review (1704 - 1713), was especially influential in promoting the union between England and Scotland in 1706-1707 and in supporting the controversial Peace of Utrecht (1713).
During the 1720s he contributed to such weekly journals as Mist's and Applebee's, wrote criminal biographies, and studied economics and geography as well as producing his major works of fiction.
At the age of 59, after a full career as businessman, government servant, political pamphleteer, and journalist, Defoe embarked upon a career as novelist and within 6 years produced the half-dozen novels which have given him his greatest fame. In April 1719 Defoe published his most enduring work, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The immediate success of the story of the shipwrecked Crusoe's solitary existence on a desert island for more than 20 years, of his encounter with the native Friday, and of his eventual rescue inspired Defoe to write The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe later in 1719 and Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprizing Adventures in 1720. That year he published another travel novel, The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton.
Defoe published comparatively little in 1721 because he was hard at work on the three major books that were to appear the following year. In January 1722 he published The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, probably the most successful of his novels. Its irony, vivid details, and psychologically valid individual scenes more than compensate for its structural weaknesses. The elderly Moll writes of her early life, of her five husbands, of her life as a prostitute, and of her adventures as a thief.
A Journal of the Plague Year, issued in March 1722, presents a stunning picture of life in London during the Great Plague of 1665, and it was thought to be history rather than fiction for more than a hundred years. The third important novel to appear in 1722, The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Col. Jacque, was published in December. In this study of a young man's rise to gentility, Defoe characteristically combined a brilliant command of detail and individual scene with an interesting but awkwardly plotted story.
Defoe died in a comatose lethargy in Ropemaker's Alley on April 24, 1731, while hiding from a creditor who had commenced proceedings against him.
Daniel Defoe is best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719–22) and Moll Flanders (1722). He is also noted for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson, and is among the founders of the English novel.
(Colonel Jack follows an orphaned boy from a life of pover...)
1722(On the evening of 26th November 1703, a cyclone from the ...)
1724(Irreverent and ironic, this 1726 satire by the author of ...)
1726(Roxana, Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiogra...)
1724(The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from ...)
1705(Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction ...)
1924(34 Complete Works of Daniel Defoe Including Moll Flanders...)
1840(Daniel Defoe relates the tale of an English sailor maroon...)
1719(In A Journal of the Plague Year, Defoe vividly chronicles...)
1722(Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published...)
1722(Large format for easy reading. The life, adventures and p...)
1720Defoe's interests and activities reflect the major social, political, economic, and literary trends of his age. He supported the policies of William III and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689, and analyzed England's emergence as the major sea and mercantile power in the Western world. He pleaded for leniency for debtors and bankrupts and defended the rights of Protestant dissenters.
Quotations:
"It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions."
"Expect nothing and you'll always be surprised."
"The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear."
"The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without."
"Justice is always violent to the party offending, for every man is innocent in his own eyes."
In 1684 Defoe married Mary Tuffley, who brought him the handsome dowry of £3, 700. They had seven children.
