A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719), a story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island. Along with Samuel Richardson, Defoe is considered the founder of the English novel. Before his time stories were usually written as long poems or dramas. Defoe published over 560 books and pamphlets and is considered to be the founder of British journalism. The son of James and Mary Foe, Daniel Defoe was born in London, in September 1660. There is controversy regarding his birthdate. No definite date could be deterred based on various sources. It is very difficult to come to any conclusion, except that he was born between July and October, 1660. Daniel was born amidst much political upheaval. Religion and choice of faith were the biggest issues of the time. Daniel's childhood was colored by such memories like, London streets filled with opposite groups defending their thoughts and interests. His memory also include the Great Plague of 1665. Thousands died in London and surrounding areas. The Foe family was miraculously saved due to foresight of James Foe. He shifted his family at a safe place, with sufficient provision and descended in London streets only after the Plague had subsided. Little Daniel was not allowed to wander outdoor, though he could sun himself at the doorstep. Daniel was a strong willed person, but so was his mother. Once, Daniel refused to eat in order to have his own way in doing something. Mrs Foe accepted the challenge and Daniel had to go through starvation. The Foes were very affectionate parents to Daniel, constantly nourishing his inquisitiveness and curious nature. The intelligent, active and enquiring little boy always came up with his insatiable thirst for knowledge and information. Even in his early education, his parents played an important part, as he was not given any formal education till 1674. His father was a City tradesman and member of the Butchers’ Company. James Foe's stubborn puritanism - the The Foes were Dissenters, Protestants who did not belong to the Anglican Church - come occasionally comes through Defoe's writing. He attended Morton's Academy, a school for Dissenters at Newton Green with the intention of becoming a minister, but he changed his mind and became a hosiery merchant instead. Defoe plunged into politics and trade, travelling extensively in Europe. His mother was partly credited for Daniel's interest in scriptures and their meanings and style. When the Papists were rumored to have seized all the Bibles, little Daniel was given the task of copying both Old and New Testaments entirely. He was suddenly introduced to a full-fledged world of Gods and Devils. His young mind was tormented with the thoughts of witches, demons and sorcerers. He suffered from nightmares and the knowledge haunted him all through his life. Thirteen years old Daniel was not admitted to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities as he did not take an oath of loyalty to the Church of England. He was sent to the excellent academy at Newington Green, administrated by Reverend Charles Morton. From Charles Morton, Defoe learned a vast deal; and the standard of Morton’s teaching was almost parallel to that of any English University. Defoe’s literary style was based on Morton’s clarity, simplicity and ease in writing style. His destiny was almost decided as his father wanted him to enter the church. Alongwith his study in classics, he learnt Latin and Greek as well as Spanish, French, Dutch and Italian. This, in fact, helped him in his career as a pamphleteer and a writer. He established a business of his own in 1683. He started his firm dealing in export of drugs, perfumes and stockings. In 1684 he married Mary Tuffley; they had two sons and five daughters. Their marital life lasted 47 years ending with the sad demise of Defoe. She had generally been a single parent to her children as Defoe was travelling most of the time. Though Defoe had chosen trade as his vocation, the intellectual within him was never satisfied with his mundane life. He wanted to acquire reputation and recognition. He wanted an existence above the deals and monotony of business. He longed for social status. He always used a horse to travel, a symbol of social status. He always blossomed in presence of an audience. Defoe had seen many ups-and-downs in his life. The market fluctuations affected Defoe's business and in those times Mary had to take help from her family and from her in-laws. He incurred a loss of £ 17,000. The main reason for his bankruptcy was the loss he incurred while insuring ships during the war with France. Within 10 years, however, he repaid all but £ 5000. Other reasons for his misfortune were his indulgence in rash speculations and projects, and his being less fastidious. He even characterized himself as one of those tradesmen who had "done things which their own principles condemned, which they are not ashamed to blush for." Misfortune dogged him continually. Defoe was climbing the social ladder. He was moving in the company of upper class politicians and aristocrats. He found his surname 'Foe' to be a bit mediocre. To make it sound more respectable and gentlemanly he put a prefix 'De' before it, making it "Defoe'. Though he had to continue his business with his old surname only. He changed it legally nine years later. He was actively involved in politics and the politicians also used his oratory skills. He was assigned some unofficial duty to work the public opinion in favor of Scotland-England union. Though the details were never revealed, he was supposed to have helped the cause positively. The political disputes, in which Defoe was involved, were mainly between the Whigs and Tories. In 1688 Defoe took part in the Monmouth Rebellion against the Roman Catholic King, King James II and became a supporter of William II, joining his army in 1688, and gaining a mercenary reputation because change of allegiance. Defoe became popular with the king after the publication of his poem, The True Born Englishman (1701). The poem attacked those who were prejudiced against having a king of foreign birth. From 1695 to 1699 he was an accountant to the commissioners of the glass duty and then associated with a brick and tile works in Tilbury. In 1703 Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, a Tory government official, employed Defoe as a spy. But all his affairs did not bring him fame. His 1703 pamphlet, The Shortest Way With The Dissenters lead him to pillar, a wooden-frame, with a space for hands and head, in which prisoners were placed for public ridicule. The foremost Dissenters, High Flyers made him pillioried. But people never turned up to throw rotten tomatoes, as was customary. They admired this True-Born Englishman too much to attempt such an action. Owing to political offenses, he was imprisoned for sometime, and had to undergo further losses in 1713, as his bricks and tiles factory near Tilbury failed. Thereafter, he never actively engaged himself in trade. While in prison Defoe wrote a mock ode, Hymn to the Pillory (1703). The poem was sold in the streets, the audience drank to his health while he stood in the pillory and read aloud his verses. When the Tories fell from power Defoe continued to carry out intelligence work for the Whig government. In his own days Defoe was regarded as an unscrupulous, diabolical journalist. Defoe used a number of pen names, including Eye Witness, T.Taylor, and Andrew Morton, Merchant. With the support of the government, Defoe started the newspaper, The Review. Published between 1704 and 1713, the newspaper appeared three times a week. As well as carrying commercial advertising The Review reported on political and social issues. Defoe also wrote several pamphlets for Harley attacking the political opposition. The Whigs took Defoe court and this resulted in him serving another prison sentence. Robinson Crusoe his most popular novel was published on April 25, 1719. It was tremendously popular with the lower and lower middle class readers. Robinson Crusoe was based partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways, such as Alexander Selkirk. However, at first Defoe had troubles in finding a publisher for the book and eventually received £10 for the manuscript. Employing a first-person narrator and apparently genuine journal entries, Defoe created a realistic frame for the novel, which distinguished it from its predecessors. The account of a shipwrecked sailor was a comment both on the human need for society and the equally powerful impulse for solitude. But it also offered a dream of building a private kingdom, a self-made Utopia, and being completely self-sufficient. By giving a vivid reality to a theme with large mythic implications, the story have since fascinated generations of readers as well as authors like Joachim Heinrich Campen, Jules Verne, R.L. Stevenson, Johann Wyss, Michael Tournier, J.M. Coetzee, and other creators. Sequels to the story, The farther adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which Crusoe revisits the island and loses Friday in an attack by savages, and The serious reflections... of Robinson Crusoe (1729), did not gain wide recognition. During the remaining years, Defoe concentrated on books rather than pamphlets. At the age of 62 he published Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack. His last great work of fiction, Roxana, appeared in 1724. Defoe's choice of a female protagonist in Moll Flanders reflected his interest in the female experience. Moll is born in Newgate, where her mother is under sentence of death for theft. Herr sentence is commuted to transportation to Virginia. The abandoned child is educated by a gentlewoman. Moll suffers romantic disillusionment when she is ruined at the hands of a cynical male seducer, she becomes a whore and a thief, but finally she gains the status of a gentlewoman through the spoils of a successful colonial plantation. This work established him as a social historian. After being close to the Whigs, Defoe moved back to the Tories. In the 1720s Defoe had ceased to be politically controversial in his writings, and he produced several historical works, and a guide book: A tour through the whole island of Great Britain (1724-27, 3 vols.), The great law of subordination considered (1724), an examination of the treatment of servants, and The complete english tradesman (1726). Defoe's father had stayed with his older brother Henry in London during the Plague Year of 1665, and their experiences possibly provided material for A journal of the plague year (1722). Defoe himself was about five years old at the time. Phenomenally industrious, Defoe produced in his last years also works involving the supernatural, The political history of the Devil (1726) and An essay on the history and reality of apparitions (1727). Even the last years of his life were not free from legal controversies. He died under the burden of heavy debts, always hiding, now and then, from his creditors, on April 26, 1731, at his lodgings in Ropemaker’s Alley, Moorfields. |
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