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DEFOE, DANIEL (c. 1.659—1731)
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See also:DEFOE, See also:DANIEL (c. 1.659—1731) , See also:English author, was See also:born in the See also:parish of St See also:Giles, Cripplegate, See also:London, in the latter See also:part of 1659 or See also:early in 166o, of a See also:nonconformist See also:family. His See also:grand-See also:father, Daniel Foe, lived at Etton, See also:Northamptonshire, apparently in comfortable circumstances, for he is said to have kept a See also:pack of hounds. As to the variation of name, Defoe or Foe, its owner signed either indifferently till See also:late in See also:life, and where his See also:initials occur they are sometimes D. F. and sometimes D. D. F. Three autograph letters of his are extant, all addressed in 1705 to the same See also:person, and signed respectively D. Foe, de Foe and Daniel Defoe. His father, See also: In the older catalogues of his See also:works two See also:pamphlets, See also:Speculum Crapegownorum, a See also:satire on the See also:clergy, and A See also:Treatise against the See also:Turks, are attributed to him before the See also:accession of James II., but there seems to be no publication of his which is certainly genuine before The See also:Character of Dr Annesley (1697). He had, however, before this, taken up arms in See also:Monmouth's expedition, and is supposed to have owed his lucky See also:escape from the clutches of the See also: He frequently boasts of his See also:personal intimacy with the " glorious and immortal " king, and927 in 1695 he was appointed accountant to the commissioners of the See also:glass See also:duty, an See also:office which he held for four years. During this time he produced his See also:Essay on Projects (1698), containing suggestions on See also:banks, road-management, friendly and See also:insurance See also:societies of various kinds, idiot asylums, bankruptcy, See also:academies, military colleges, high See also:schools for See also:women, &c. It displays Defoe's lively and lucid See also:style in full vigour, and abounds with ingenious thoughts and See also:apt illustrations, though it illustrates also the unsystematic character of his mind. In the same See also:year Defoe wrote the first of a See also:long See also:series of pamphlets on the then burning question of occasional conformity. In this, for the first time, he showed the unlucky See also:independence which, in so many other instances, See also:united all parties against him. While he pointed out to the dissenters the scandalous inconsistency of their playing fast and loose with sacred things, yet he'denounced the impropriety of requiring tests at all. In support of the See also:government he published, in 1698, An See also:Argument for a See also:Standing See also:Army, followed in 1700 by a See also:defence of William's See also:war policy called The Two See also:Great Questions considered, and a set of pamphlets on the See also:Partition Treaty. Thus in See also:political matters he had the same See also:fate as in ecclesiastical; for the Whigs were no more prepared than the Tories to support William through thick and thin. He also dealt with the questions of stock-jobbing and of electioneering corruption. But his most remarkable publication at this time was The True-Born Englishman (1701), a satire in rough but extremely vigorous See also:verse on the See also:national objection to William as a foreigner, and on the claim of purity of See also:blood for a nation which Defoe chooses to represent as crossed'and dashed with all the strains and races in See also:Europe. He also took a prominent part in the proceedings which followed the Kentish See also:petition, and was the author, some say the presenter, of the See also:Legion Memorial, which asserted in the strongest terms the supremacy of the See also:electors over the elected, and of which even an irate See also:House of See also:Commons did not dare to take much See also:notice. The theory of the indefeasible supremacy of the freeholders of See also:England, whose delegates merely, according to this theory, the Commons were, was one of Defoe's favourite political tenets, and he returned to it in a powerfully written See also:tract entitled The See also:Original See also:Power of the Collective See also:Body of the See also:People of England examined and asserted (1701). At the same time he was occupied in a controversy on the conformity question with See also: There is no doubt that Harley, who understood the See also:influence wielded by Defoe, made some conditions. Defoe says he received no See also:pension, but his subsequent fidelity was at all events indirectly rewarded; moreover, Harley's moderation in a time of the extremest party-See also:insanity was no little recommendation to Defoe. During his imprisonment he was by no means idle. A See also:spurious edition of his works having been issued, he himself produced a collection of twenty-two See also:treatises, to which some time afterwards he added a second See also:group of eighteen more. He also wrote in prison many See also:short pamphlets, chiefly controversial, published a curious See also:work on the famous See also:storm of the 26th of See also:November 1703, and started in See also:February 1704 perhaps the most remarkable of all his projects, The See also:Review. This was a See also:paper which was issued during the greater part of its life three times a See also:week. It was entirely written by Defoe, and extends to eight complete volumes and some few See also:score See also:numbers of a second issue. He did not confine himself to See also:news, but wrote something very like finished essays on questions of policy, See also:trade and domestic concerns; he also introduced a " See also:Scandal See also:Club," in which See also:minor questions of See also:manners and morals were treated in a way which undoubtedly suggested the Tatlers and Spectators which followed. Only one complete copy of the work is known to exist, and that is in the See also:British Museum. It is probable that if bulk, rapidity of See also:production, variety of See also:matter, originality of See also:design, and excellence of style be taken together, hardly any author can show a work of equal magnitude. After his release Defoe went to See also:Bury St See also:Edmunds, though he did not interrupt either his Review or his occasional pamphlets. One of these, Giving See also:Alms no Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation (1704), is extraordinarily far-sighted. It denounces both indiscriminate alms-giving and the national work-shops proposed by See also:Sir See also:Humphrey Mackworth.
In 1705 appeared The Consolidator, or See also:Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the See also:World in the See also:Moon, a political satire which is supposed to have given some hints for See also:Swift's Gulliver's Travels; and at the end of the year Defoe performed a See also:secret See also:mission, the first of several of the kind, for Harley. In 1706 appeared the True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs Veal, long supposed to have been written for a bookseller to help off an unsaleable See also:translation of Drelincourt,•On Death, but considerable doubt has been See also:cast upon this by William See also: In the negotiations concerning the See also:Peace of See also:Utrecht, Defoe strongly supported the ministerial side, to the intense wrath of the Whigs, displayed in an attempted See also:prosecution against some pamphlets of his on the all-important question of the See also:succession. Again the influence of Harley saved him. He continued, however, to take the side of the dissenters in the questions affecting religious liberty, which played such a prominent part towards the See also:close of Anne's reign. He naturally shared Harley's downfall; and, though the loss of his salary might seem a poor reward for his See also:constant support oL the Hanoverian claim, it was little more than his ambiguous, not to say trimming, position must have led him to expect. Defoe declared that See also:Lord Annesley was preparing the army in. See also:Ireland to join a Jacobite See also:rebellion, and was indicted for See also:libel; and See also:prior to his trial (1715) he published an apologia entitled An See also:Appeal to See also:Honour and See also:Justice, in which he defended his political conduct. Having been convicted of the libel he was liberated later in the year under circumstances that only became clear in 1864, when six letters were discovered in the See also:Record Office from Defoe to a Government See also:official, Charles Delafaye, which, according to William Lee, established the fact that in 1718 at least Defoe was doing not only political work, but that it was of a somewhat equivocal kind—that he was, in fact, sub-editing the Jacobite Mist's See also:Journal, under a secret agreement with the government that he should See also:tone down the sentiments and omit objectionable items. He had, in fact, been released on See also:condition of becoming a government See also:agent. He seems to have performed the same not very See also:honourable office in the case of two other journals—Dormer's See also:Letter and the Mercurius Politicus; and to have written in these and other papers until nearly the end of his life. Before these letters were discovered it was supposed that Defoe's political work had ended in 1715. Up to that time Defoe had written nothing but occasional literature, and, except the History of the Union and Jure Divino, nothing of any great length. In 1715 appeared the first See also:volume of The Family Instructor, which was very popular during the 18th See also:century. The first volume of his most famous work, the immortal story—partly See also:adventure, partly moralizing—of The Life and See also:Strange Surprising Adventures of See also:Robinson Crusoe, was published on the 25th of See also:April 1719. It ran through four See also:editions in as many months, and then in August appeared the second volume. Twelve months afterwards the sequel Serious Reflections, now hardly ever reprinted, appeared. Its connexion with the two former parts is little more than nominal, Crusoe being simply made the mouth-piece of Defoe's sentiments on various points of morals and See also:religion. Meanwhile the first two parts were reprinted as a See also:feuilleton in See also:Heathcote's Intelligencer, perhaps the earliest instance of the See also:appearance of such a work in such a See also:form. The See also:story was founded on Dempier's Voyage See also:round the World (1697), and still more on See also: Contemporaneously appeared The Dumb Philosopher; or Dickory Cronke, who gains the power of speech at the end of his life and uses it to predict the course of See also:European affairs.
In 1720 came The Life and Adventures of Mr See also:Duncan See also: There is also a Quaker who plays a very creditable part in See also:Roxana (1724), and Defoe seems to have been well affected to the Friends. In estimating this wonderful productiveness on the part of a man sixty years old, it should be remembered that it was a See also:habit of Defoe's to keep his work in See also:manuscript sometimes for long periods. In 1721 nothing of importance was produced, but in the next twelvemonth three See also:capital works appeared. These were The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll See also:Flanders, The Journal of the See also:Plague Year, and The History of See also:Colonel See also:Jack. Moll Flanders and The Fortunate See also:Mistress (Roxana), which followed in 1724, have subjects of a rather more than questionable character, but both display the remarkable See also:art with which Defoe handles such subjects. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the difference between the two is that between See also:gross and polished See also:vice. The real difference is much more one of morals than of manners. Moll is by no means of the lowest class. Notwithstanding the greater degradation into which she falls, and her originally dependent position, she has been well educated, and has See also:con-sorted with persons of See also:gentle birth. She displays throughout much greater real refinement of feeling than the more high-flying Roxana, and is at any rate flesh and blood, if the flesh be somewhat frail and the blood somewhat hot. Neither of the heroines has any but the rudiments of a moral sense; but Roxana, both in her original transgression and in her subsequent conduct, is actuated merely by avarice and selfishness—vices which are peculiarly offensive in connexion with her other failing, and which make her thoroughly repulsive. The art of both stories is great, and that of the See also:episode of the daughter Susannah in Roxana is consummate; but the transitions of the later See also:plot are less natural than those in Moll Flanders. It is only See also:fair to notice that while the latter, according to Defoe's more usual practice, is allowed to repent and end happily, Roxana is brought to complete misery; Defoe's morality, therefore, required more repulsiveness in one case than in the other. In the Journal of the Plague Year, more usually called, from the See also:title of the second edition, A History of the Plague, the accuracy and apparent veracity of the details is so great that many persons have taken it for an authentic record, while others have contended for the existence of such a record as its basis. But here too the See also:genius of Mrs Veal's creator must, in the See also:absence of all See also:evidence to the contrary, be allowed sufficient for the task. The History of Colonel Jack is an unequal book. There is hardly in Robinson Crusoe a See also:scene equal, and there is consequently not in English literature a scene See also:superior, to that where the youthful pickpocket first exercises his trade, and then for a time loses his See also:ill-gotten gains. But a great part of the book, especially the latter portion, is dull; and in fact it may be generally remarked of Defoe that the conclusions of his tales are not equal to the beginning, perhaps from the restless indefatigability with which he undertook one work almost before See also:finishing another. To this period belong his stories of famous criminals, of Jack See also:Sheppard (1724), of See also:Jonathan Wild (1725), of the Highland See also:Rogue i.e. Rob See also:Roy (1723). The pamphlet on the first of these Defoe maintained to be a transcript of a paper which he persuaded Sheppard to give to a friend at his See also:execution. In 1724 appeared also the first volume of A Tour through the whole See also:Island of Great See also:Britain, which was completed in the two following years. Much of the See also:information in this was derived from personal experience, for Defoe claims to have made many more See also:tours and visits about England than those of which we have record; but the See also:major part must necessarily have been dexterous compilation. In 1725 appeared A New Voyage round the World, apparently entirely due to the author's own fertile imagination and extensive See also:reading. It is full of his See also:peculiar verisimilitude and has all the interest of See also:Anson's or See also:Dampier's voyages, with a See also:charm of style superior even to that of the latter. In 1726 Defoe published a curious and amusing little pamphlet entitled Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business, or Private Abuses Public Grievances, exemplified in the See also:Pride, Insolence, and Exorbitant See also:Wages of our Women-Servants, Footmen, &c. This subject was a favourite one with him, and in the pamphlet he showed the immaturity of his political views by advocating legislative interference in these matters. Towards the end of this same year The Complete English Tradesman, which may be supposed to sum up the experience of his business life, appeared, and its second volume followed two years afterwards. This book has been variously judged. It is generally and traditionally praised, but those who have read it will be more disposed to agree with Charles See also:Lamb, who considers it " of a vile and debasing tendency," and thinks it " almost impossible to suppose the author in See also:earnest." The intolerable meanness advocated for the See also:sake of the paltriest gains, the entire ignoring of any pursuit in life except See also:money-getting, and the See also:representation of the whole duty of man as consisting first in the attainment of a competent fortune, and next, when that fortune has been attained, in spending not more than See also:half of it, are certainly repulsive enough. But there are no reasons for thinking the performance ironical or insincere, and it cannot be doubted that Defoe would have been honestly unable even to understand Lamb's indignation. To 1726 also belongs The Political History of the See also:Devil. This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe's ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are A See also:System of Magic (1726), and An Essay on the History of See also:Apparitions (1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible; but in The History of the Devil he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the manner in which he handles the subject is an See also:odd and not altogether satisfactory mixture of See also:irony and earnestness. A See also:Plan of English See also:Commerce, containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared in 1728. During the years from 1715 to 1728 Defoe had issued pamphlets and minor works too numerous to mention. The only one of them perhaps which requires notice is Religious Courtship (1722), a curious series of dialogues displaying Defoe's unaffected religiosity, and at the same time the rather meddling intrusiveness with which he applied his religious notions. This was more flagrantly illustrated in one of his latest works, The Treatise Concerning the Use and Abuse of the See also:Marriage See also:Bed (1727), which was originally issued with a much more offensive name, and has been called " an excellent book with an improper title." The Memoirs of Captain See also:Carleton (1728) were long attributed to Defoe, but the See also:internal evidence is strongly against his authorship. They have been also attributed to Swift, with greater See also:probability
,I?
as far as style is concerned. The Life of See also:Mother See also:Ross, reprinted in See also:Bohn's edition, has no claim whatever to be considered Defoe's.
There is little to be said of Defoe's private life during this period. He must in some way or other have obtained a consider-able income. In 1724 he had built himself a large house at Stoke Newington, which had stables and grounds of considerable See also:size. From the negotiations for the marriage of his daughter See also:Sophia it appears that he had landed See also:property in more than one See also:place, and he had obtained on See also:lease in 1722 a considerable See also:estate from the See also:corporation of See also:Colchester, which was settled on his unmarried daughter at his death. Other property was similarly allotted to his widow and remaining See also:children, though some difficulty seems to have arisen from the misconduct of his son, to whom, for some purpose, the property was assigned during his father's lifetime, and who refused to pay what was due. There is a good See also:deal of See also:mystery about the end of Defoe's life; it used to be said that he died insolvent, and that he had been in jail shortly before his death.. As a matter of fact, after great suffering from See also:gout and See also: He See also:left no will, all his property having been previously assigned, and letters of See also:administration were taken out by a creditor. How his affairs See also:fell into this condition, why he did not See also:die in his own house, and why in the previous summer he had been in hiding, as we know he was from a letter still extant, are points not clearly explained. He was, however, attacked by Mist, whom he wounded, in prison in 1724. It is most likely that Mist had found out that Defoe was a government agent and quite probable that he communicated his knowledge to other editors, for Defoe's journalistic employment almost ceased about this time, and he began to write anonymously, or as " Andrew Moreton." It is possible that he had to go into hiding to avoid the danger of being accused as a real Jacobite, when those with whom he had contracted to assume the character were dead and could no longer justify his attitude. Defoe married, on New Year's See also:Day, 1684, Mary Tuffley, who survived until See also:December 1732. They had seven children. His second son, See also:Bernard or See also:Benjamin See also:Norton, has, like his father, a scandalous See also:niche in the Dunciad. In April 1877 public attention was called to the See also:distress of three See also:maiden ladies, directly descended from Defoe, and bearing his name; and a See also:crown pension of £75 a year was bestowed on each of them. His youngest daughter, Sophia, who married Henry See also:Baker, left a considerable See also:correspondence, now in the hands of her descendants. There are several portraits of Defoe, the See also:principal one being engraved by Vandergucht. In his lifetime, Defoe, as not belonging to either of the great parties at a time of the bitterest party strife, was subjected to obloquy on both sides. The great Whig writers leave him unnoticed. Swift and See also:Gay speak slightingly of him, — the former, it is true, at a time when he was only known as a party pamphleteer. Pope, with less excuse, put him in the Dunciad towards the end of his life, but he confessed to See also:Spence in private that Defoe had written many things and none bad. At a later period he was unjustly described as " a scurrilous party writer," which he certainly was not; but, on the other See also:hand, See also: He, the satirist of the true-born English-man, was himself a model, with some notable See also:variations and improvements, of the Englishman of his period. He saw a great many things, and what he did see he saw clearly. But there were also a great many things which he did not see, and there was often no logical connexion whatever between his See also:vision and his See also:blindness. The most curious example of this inconsistency, or rather of this indifference to See also:general principle, occurs in his Essay on Projects. He there speaks very briefly and slightingly of life insurance, probably because it was then regarded as impious by religionists of his complexion. But on either side of this refusal are to be found elaborate projects of friendly societies and widows' funds, which practically See also:cover, in a clumsy and roundabout manner, the whole ground of life insurance. In morals it is evident that he was, according to his See also:lights, a strictly honest and honourable man. But sentiment of any " high-flying " description—to use the cant word of his time—was quite incomprehensible to him, or rather never presented itself as a thing to be comprehended. He tells us with honest and See also:simple pride that when his See also:patron Harley fell out, and Godolphin came in, he for three years held no communication with the former, and seems quite incapable of comprehending the delicacy which would have obliged him to follow Harley's fallen fortunes. His very anomalous position in regard to Mist is also indicative of a rather See also:blunt moral See also:perception. One of the most affecting things in his novels is the heroic constancy and fidelity of the maid Amy to her exemplary mistress Roxana. But Amy, scarcely by her own See also:fault, is See also:drawn into certain breaches of definite moral laws which Defoe did understand, and she is therefore condemned, with hardly a word of pity, to a miserable end. Nothing heroic or romantic was within Defoe's view; he could not understand passionate love, ideal See also:loyalty, aesthetic admiration or anything of the kind; and it is probable that many of the little sordid touches which delight us by their apparent satire were, as de-signed, not satire at all, but merely a faithful representation of the feelings and ideas of the classes of which he himself was a unit. His political and economical pamphlets are almost unmatched as clear presentations of the views of their writer. For See also:driving the See also:nail home no one but Swift excels him, and Swift perhaps only in The Dra See also:pier's Letters. There is often a great deal to be said against the view presented in those pamphlets, but Defoe See also:sees nothing of it. He was perfectly fair but perfectly one-sided, being generally happily ignorant of everything which told against his own view. The same characteristics are curiously illustrated in his moral works. The morality of these is almost amusing in its down-right See also:positive character. With all the Puritan eagerness to push a clear, uncompromising, Scripture-based distinction of right and wrong into the affairs of every-day life, he has a thoroughly English horror of See also:casuistry, and his clumsy canons consequently make wild work with the See also:infinite intricacies of human nature. He is, in fact, an instance of the tendency, which has so often been remarked by other nations in the English, to See also:drag in moral distinctions at every turn, and to confound everything which is novel to the experience, unpleasant to the See also:taste, and incomprehensible to the understanding, under the general epithets of wrong, wicked and shocking. His works of this class therefore are now the least valuable, though not the least curious, of his books. The earliest regular life and estimate of Defoe is that of Dr Towers in the Biographia Britannica. See also:George See also:Chalmers's Life, however (1786), added very considerable information. In 183o Walter See also: Wilson's contains 210 distinct works, three or four only of which are marked as doubtful; See also:Hazlitt's enumerates 183 " genuine " and 52 " attributed " pieces, with notes on most of them; Lee's extends to 254, of which 64 claim to be new additions. The reprint (3yOls.) edited for the " Pulteney Library " by Hazlitt in 1840-1843 contains a good and full life mainly de-rived from Wilson, the whole of the novels (including the Serious Reflections now hardly ever published with Robinson Crusoe), Jure Divino, The Use and Abuse of Marriage, and many of the more important tracts and smaller works. There is also an edition, often called Scott's, but really edited by Sir G. C. See also:Lewis, in twenty volumes (London, 184o-1841). This contains the Complete Trades-man, Religious Courtship, The Consolidator and oth"r works not comprised in Hazlitt's. Scott had previously in 1809 edited for Ballantyne some of the novels, in twelve volumes. Bohn's " British Classics " includes the novels (except the third part of Robinson Crusoe), The History of the Devil, The Storm, and a few political pamphlets, also the undoubtedly spurious Mother Ross. In 187o Nimmo of Edinburgh published in one volume an admirable selection from Defoe. It contains Chalmers's Life, annotated and completed from Wilson and Lee, Robinson Crusoe, pts. i. and ii., Colonel Jack, The Cavalier, Duncan Campbell, The Plague, Everybody's Business, Mrs Veal, The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Giving Alms no Charity, The True-Born Englishman, Hymn to the Pillory, and very copious extracts from The Complete English Tradesman. An edition of Defoe's Romances and Narratives in sixteen volumes by G. A. Aitken came out in 1895.
If we turn to separate works, the bibliography of Defoe is practically confined (except as far as original editions are concerned) to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs Veal has been' to some extent popularized by the work which it helped to sell; Religious Courtship and The Family Instructor had a See also:vogue among the middle class until well into the 19th century, and The History of the Union was republished in 1786. But the reprints and editions of Crusoe have been innumerable; it has been often translated; and the eulogy pronounced on it by See also: 32,555. Further See also:light was thrown on Defoe's work as a political agent by the discovery (1906) of an unpublished paper of his in the British Museum by G. F. See also:Warner. This was printed in the English Historical Review, and afterwards separately. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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