Robinson Crusoe (1719)
A mariner from York is shipwrecked for 28 years on an island near the Orinoco and rescues Friday
Literature · Novelists
Daniel Defoe
c. 1660–1731 · English
Early English novel; journalism and political pamphleteering
Daniel Defoe was a London merchant, pamphleteer, government agent and journalist who, at around the age of 59, turned to fiction and produced Robinson Crusoe (1719). That book and the realistic first-person narratives that followed, such as Moll Flanders, have earned him the title of a father of the English novel.
How to spot them
- ▸Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday; the castaway inspired partly by Alexander Selkirk
- ▸Moll Flanders, born in Newgate Prison; Roxana; Captain Singleton
- ▸Pilloried in 1703 for the satirical pamphlet The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters
- ▸Born plain 'Foe'; wrote A Journal of the Plague Year and A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain
Key works
Moll Flanders (1722)
The fortunes and misfortunes of a thief and many-times-married woman born in Newgate
A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
Fictionalised eyewitness account of the Great Plague of London in 1665, narrated by 'H. F.'
Roxana (1724)
A courtesan's rise and moral decline; his last novel
The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702)
Ironic pamphlet urging extermination of Dissenters; it led to his imprisonment and the pillory
The True-Born Englishman (1701)
Satirical poem defending the Dutch-born William III against xenophobic critics
A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1727)
Three-volume travel account of Britain's economy and towns
Key ideas
- Plain, circumstantial first-person realism, often presented as a true memoir rather than fiction
- Robinson Crusoe as a myth of economic individualism, colonial mastery and Puritan providence
Quick-fire facts
- •Born Daniel Foe, the son of a London tallow chandler; he added the 'De' around 1695
- •Robinson Crusoe's first line begins: 'I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York'
- •Alexander Selkirk, marooned on Juan Fernández (Más a Tierra) 1704–1709, is a likely inspiration for Crusoe
- •Stood in the pillory in 1703 and wrote A Hymn to the Pillory; the crowd reportedly threw flowers
- •Worked as a secret agent for Robert Harley, including in Scotland around the 1707 Act of Union
- •Wrote and ran almost single-handed the periodical A Review (1704–1713)
- •Crusoe's man Friday is named for the day of the week on which he was rescued
- •Buried in Bunhill Fields, London, the Nonconformist burial ground
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Daniel Defoe
- Dinah Birch (ed.) — The Oxford Companion to English Literature