Daniel Defoe (1660-1725)

Such ambitious debates on society and human nature ran

parallel with the explorations of a literary form finding new
popularity with a large audience, the novel. Daniel Defoe came
to sustained prose fiction late in a career of quite various, often
disputatious writing. The variety of interests that he had
pursued in all his occasional work (much of which is not
attributed to him with any certainty) left its mark on his morelasting achievements. His distinction, though earned in other
fields of writing than the polemical, is constantly underpinned
by the generous range of his curiosity.
1701, The True-Born Englishman
1702, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters
1704, thrice-weekly The Review
1709, History of the Union
Only someone of his catholic interests could have
sustained, for instance, the superb Tour Thro the Whole Island
of Great Britain (172427). This is a vivid county-by-county
review and celebration of the state of the nation, which
combines an antiquarians enthusiasm with a passion for trade
and commercial progress. It is an informed, scrupulous account
of an expanding nation. He brought the same diversity of
enthusiasms into play in writing his novels.
He starts writing fiction in his middle age, capitalising on his
experience of other genres the polemic pamphlet, biography,
history, travel book. He seeks the impression of realism, with
puritan self-confessions narratives which read like fictional
moral tracts. Prose fiction is supposed to be an instructor and
entertainer, apt for the new age of increased literacy and
leisure. Defoe answers the need for easily assimilated, morally
serious, realist literature bearing the significations of private
experience outside the realm of aristocrats or monarchs.
The first of these, The Life and Strange Surprising
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), an immediate success
at home and on the Continent, is a unique fictional blending of
the traditions of Puritan spiritual autobiography with an
insistent scrutiny of the nature of man as social creature and an
extraordinary ability to invent a sustaining modern myth. The

novel reveals the rewards of private moral zeal, and the

workings of spiritual rather than political justice. Crusoe is the
ideal narrator choice, with his experience of a redemption
journey back to grace. His cultivation of the soil parallels that of
the spirit. His taking possession of the island mirrors English
colonisation a king with an undoubted right of dominion. He
rules as an absolute Lord and Law giver, while promoting a
Liberty of Conscience. His triumph is that of the human will over
an alien environment. He is a lonely exile who logs the nature of
moral survival and the grace of a benign God. The sequel
Further Adventures does not rise to the initial success.
1720 The Adventures of Captain Singleton
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) displays enticing powers of
self-projection into a situation of which Defoe can only have had
experience through the narrations of others, and both Moll
Flanders (1722) and The Fortunate Mistress, Roxana (1724) lure
the reader into puzzling relationships with narrators the degree
of whose own self-awareness is repeatedly and provocatively
placed in doubt. The Fable is always made for the Moral, not
the Fable for the Moral. (Preface to Moll Flanders)
1722 The History of the Remarkable Life of the Truly
Honourable Colonel Jacques: Perhaps when I wrote these things
down, I did not foresee, that the Writings of our own Stories
would be so much the fashion in England, or as agreeable to
read as I find Custom, and the Humour of the Times has caused
it to be. One private mean persons life may be many ways
made Useful and Instructing to those who read them, if moral
and religious Improvement and reflections are made by those
that write them.
1724 Memoirs of a Cavalier