Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731), was an English novelist and journalist. He wrote Robinson Crusoe, one of the first English novels and one of the most popular adventure stories in Western literature. Critics have debated what role Defoe played in the development of the English novel, but he was undoubtedly a great master of realistic narrative and had a remarkable sense of detail in his work.
His life.
Defoe was born in London. He was the son of a Protestant butcher and candle merchant. He started a business career, but he went bankrupt and turned to writing. Defoe’s earliest writings dealt with such controversial subjects as politics and religion. A political pamphlet led to Defoe’s imprisonment in 1703 for about 4 months.
For about 25 years, Defoe earned his living as a journalist. He produced his own periodical, The Review, single-handedly from 1704 to 1713. Many politicians hired him to write for newspapers. At times he was secretly writing for the Whig Party in one paper and the Tories in another. Not much is known about his last years, but he continued to write much political journalism, as well as other kinds of work. He died on April 26, 1731.
His writings.
Defoe is unusual for the quantity and variety of his works. It is difficult to tell how many works he produced, because most were published anonymously. The latest estimate of his works is almost 550, including works of poetry, theology, economics, and geography.
For most readers today, Defoe is known primarily as a novelist. However, he did not become a novelist until he was about 60 years old and this was really a minor part of his writing. Defoe’s two most famous novels are Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722).
Defoe’s novels reflect the growing power and wealth the new English merchant class developed through new business opportunities at home and abroad. Many members of this class were Puritans and they tended to glorify hard work and getting ahead through one’s own efforts. The Puritans also stressed education, and therefore became a large part of the reading public. Defoe was one of the first writers to portray trade, capitalism, and business favorably.
Robinson Crusoe is the story of a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It is presented as though it is Crusoe’s actual autobiography. Through his own hard work, inventiveness, and will to succeed, Crusoe turns his island into a thriving colony. See Robinson Crusoe.
Moll Flanders has been generally accepted as Defoe’s best example of a genuine novel. Moll Flanders, the heroine, is a thief and a prostitute. She later repents of her sins and achieves prosperity. Her surroundings differ from those of Robinson Crusoe, but there are basic similarities between the two characters. Both seem like real people determined to get ahead and gain security. Eventually, they both end prosperously.
Defoe’s novels marked an important break with the fiction of the past. He offered the ordinary lives of real people who were the normal products of their social and economic surroundings. Defoe makes us believe in the reality of what we are reading by using concrete, realistic details. But he does not provide much psychological insight into his characters.
