Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731)

A portrait of the English writer Daniel Defoe, c. 1702. His famous work Robinson Crusoe was written when he was nearly sixty years old. Based on the true story of the sailor Alexander Selkirk, the book tells how the fictional shipwrecked Crusoe battles for survival in virtual solitude.

English writer. His Robinson Crusoe (1719), though claiming to be a factual account of shipwreck and solitary survival, was influential in the development of the novel. The fictional Moll Flanders (1722) and the partly factual A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) are still read for their concrete realism. A highly productive journalist and pamphleteer, he was imprisoned in 1703 for the ironic The Shortest Way with Dissenters (1702).

Defoe was born in London and educated for the Nonconformist ministry, but became a hosier. He took part in Monmouth's rebellion in 1685 (in which Monmouth attempted to claim the English throne), and joined William of Orange in 1688 (who successfully claimed the throne from James II). Defoe was bankrupted three times as a result of various business ventures, once for the then enormous amount of £17,000. After his business had failed, he held a civil-service post from 1695 to 1699. Since Defoe's death, an increasing number of works have been attributed to him, bringing the total to more than 600.

He wrote numerous pamphlets and first achieved fame with the satirical poem The True-Born Englishman (1701). Serving five months in Newgate prison for The Shortest Way with Dissenters, he wrote his Hymn to the Pillory in 1703 and made plans for a political periodical, which was published as the Review (1704–13). He travelled in Scotland 1706–07, working to promote the Union (of England and Scotland), and published A History of the Union of Great Britain in 1709. During the next ten years he was almost constantly employed as a political controversialist and pamphleteer. His version of the contemporary short story ‘True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs Veal’ (1706) revealed a gift for realistic narrative, and Robinson Crusoe, based on the adventure of Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, was followed by, among others, the pirate story Captain Singleton (1720) and the picaresque (dealing with the adventures of a rogue) Colonel Jack (1722) and Roxana (1724).