Easton Press Daniel Defoe books
Robinson Crusoe - 100 Greatest Books Ever Written - 1976A Journal of The Plague Year - 100 Greatest Books Ever Written - 1978
Moll Flanders - The Collector's Library of Famous Editions - 1983
Franklin Library Daniel Defoe books
Moll Flanders - 100 Greatest Books of All Time - 1978
Moll Flanders - World's Best Loved Books - 1983
Robinson Crusoe - World's Best Loved Books - 1985
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Daniel Defoe biography
He was born Daniel Foe, probably in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. Both the date and the place of his birth are uncertain. His father, James Foe, though a member of the Butchers' Company was a tallow chandler. Daniel later added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux. His parents were Presbyterian dissenters, and he was educated in a Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington run by Charles Morton (later vice-president of Harvard University).
After leaving school and deciding not to become a dissenting minister, Defoe entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woollen goods, and wine. Though his ambitions were great and he bought both a country estate and a ship (as well as civet cats to make perfume), he was rarely free from debt. In 1692 was arrested for payments of £700 (and his cats were seized), though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000. His laments were loud, and he always defended unfortunate debtors, but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest.
Following his release, he probably travelled in Europe and Scotland, and it may have been at this time that he traded in wine to Cadiz, Porto, and Lisbon. By 1695 he was back in England, using the name "Defoe", and serving as a "commissioner of the glass duty", responsible for collecting the tax on bottles. In 1696, he was operating a tile and brick factory in Tilbury, Essex.
Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on July 31, 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters", in which he ruthlessly satirised the High church Tories, purporting to argue for the extermination of dissenters. The publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory, however, caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects, and to drink to his health.
After his three days in the pillory Defoe went into Newgate Prison. Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent. He set up his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France in 1704, supporting the Harley ministry. The Review ran without interruption until 1713. When Harley lost power in 1708 Defoe continued writing it to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710 to 1714. After the Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government.
Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his subsequent adventures. The author may have based his narrative on the true story of the shipwreck of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk.
Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton (1720), amazing for its portrayal of the redemptive power of one man's love for another. Hans Turley has recently shown how Quaker William's love turns Captain Singleton away from the murderous life of a pirate, and the two make a solemn vow to live as a male couple happily ever after in London, disguised as Greeks and never speaking English in public, with Singleton married to William's sister as a ruse.
Defoe wrote an account of the Great Plague of 1665: A Journal of the Plague Year.
He also wrote Moll Flanders (1722), a picaresque first-person narration of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England. She appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to keep the reader's sympathy. Both this work and Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress (1724) offer remarkable examples of the way in which Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn from life") characters, not least in that they are women.
Daniel Defoe died on April 24 or 25, 1731 and was interred in Bunhill Fields, London.
No fewer than 545 titles, ranging from satirical poems, political and religious pamphlets and volumes have been ascribed to Defoe. His ambitious business ventures saw him bankrupt by 1692, with a wife and seven children to support. In 1703 he published an ironic attack on the High Tories, and was prosecuted for seditious libel, sentenced to be pilloried, fined 200 marks, and be detained at the Queen's pleasure. In despair he wrote to William Paterson, the London Scot, and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darién scheme, who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, leading Minister and spymaster in the English Government. Harley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.
Defoe began his campaign in The Review and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an "inexhaustible treasury of men", a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706 Harley ordered Defoe to Edinburgh as a secret agent, to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence of the Treaty. He was very conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such The Letters of Daniel Defoe, (edited by GH Healey, Oxford 1955) which are readily available far more is known about his activities than is usual with such agents.
His first reports were of vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind," he reported. Years later John Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that,
"He was a spy among us, but not known as such, otherwise the Mob of Edinburgh would pull him to pieces."
Defoe being a Presbyterian, who suffered in England for his convictions, was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was "privy to all their folly", but "Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England." He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported back:
"Having had the honour to be always sent for the committee to whom these amendments were referrèd, I have had the good fortune to break their measures in two particulars via the bounty on Corn and proportion of the Excise."
For Scotland he used different arguments, even the opposite of those he used in England, for example, usually ignoring the English doctrine of the Sovereignty of Parliament, telling the Scots that they could have complete confidence in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union, but always having the last word for himself.
He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by just ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of the Duke of Hamilton, the official leader of the Squadrone Volante against the Union, who finally acted against his comrades in the decisive stages of the debate. Hamilton was to lead an Anti-Union Rebellion of 1708, where Covenanters had marched from Galloway (and were betrayed at Dumfries) to unite with Jacobites at Edinburgh. A Highland Army camped outside Edinburgh were given the keys by the town guard to let them in. The Illustrious Duke failed to turn up, due to a toothache, and the French frigates in the Firth of Forth had to turn back.
Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehement for its independence from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and, of course, no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he actually admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland, which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union, was "not the case, but rather the contrary".
Defoe's description of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a "Dear Green Place" has often been misquoted as a Gaelic translation for the town. The Gaelic Glas could mean grey or green, chu means dog or hollow. Glaschu probably actually means 'Green Hollow'. The "Dear Green Place", like much of Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the Union. The local Tron minister urged his congregation "to up and anent for the City of God". The 'Dear Green Place' and "City of God" required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty, as at almost every mercat cross in Scotland.
When Defoe revisited in the mid 1720s he claimed that the hostility towards his party was, "because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against."
Daniel Defoe books in order
The Consolidator (1705)
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720)
Captain Singleton (1720)
Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720)
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
Colonel Jack (1722)
Moll Flanders (1722)
Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)
Non-fiction
The Buccaneers and Marooners of America (1684)
An Essay Upon Projects (1697)
The Storm (1704)
Atlantis Major (1711)
The Family Instructor (1715)
Memoirs of the Church of Scotland (1717)
The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard (1724)
A Narrative of All The Robberies, Escapes, &c. of John Sheppard (1724)
A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (1724–1727)
A New Voyage Round the World (1724)
The Political History of the Devil (1726)
The Complete English Tradesman (1726)
A treatise concerning the use and abuse of the marriage bed... (1727)
A Plan of the English Commerce (1728)
Pamphlets or essays in prose
The Poor Man's Plea (1698)
The History of the Kentish Petition (1701)
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702)
The Great Law of Subordination Consider'd (1704)
Giving Alms No Charity, and Employing the Poor (1704)
An Appeal to Honour and Justice, Tho' it be of his Worst Enemies (1715)
A Vindication of the Press (1718)
Every-body's Business, Is No-body's Business (1725)
The Protestant Monastery (1726)
Parochial Tyranny (1727)
Augusta Triumphans (1728)
Second Thoughts are Best (1729)
An Essay Upon Literature (1726)
Mere Nature Delineated (1726)
Conjugal Lewdness (1727)
Pamphlets or essays in verse
The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr (1701)
Hymn to the Pillory (1703)
An Essay on the Late Storm (1704)
Jure Divino: a satyr (1706)
Contested works attributed to Defoe
A Friendly Epistle by way of reproof from one of the people called Quakers, to T. B., a dealer in many words (1715).
The King of Pirates (1719)
The Pirate Gow (1725)
A General History of the Pyrates (1724, 1725, 1726, 1828)
The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts (1726)
Captain Carleton's Memoirs of an English Officer (1728)
The life and adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly call'd Mother Ross (1740)
Source and additional information: Daniel Defoe