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Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Who?
Arguably, Britain's first novelist. A merchant and dissenter, he was the most prolific writer of his time and hugely versatile. Produced some 560 books, pamphlets, journals, many anonymously or pseudonymously. A master of plain prose and powerful narrative, with a love of realistic detail, he was also a journalist.
Must reads
Robinson Crusoe (1719), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724).
Good excuse
Moll Flanders and Roxana include lots of sex, enough to shock the middle-class readers of the time, but all for a good cause – the books were meant to improve morals.
Darkest hour
In 1703, he was put in the pillory for writing the pamphlet The Shortest Way With Dissenters, in which he hysterically demanded the total suppression of dissent. Upper-class readers missed his irony, and his deliberate exaggeration, and on realising he was laughing at them, threw him in jail for six months.
Greatest triumph
Touring the UK between 1703 and 1714 on behalf of the Tory statesman Robert Harley, who got him out of prison with a royal pardon. Defoe was employed by Harley as a spy and enjoyed travelling around the country and reporting back to his paymasters.
Essential quotes
'It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition.' (Robinson Crusoe)
'I takes my man Friday with me.' (Robinson Crusoe)
'From this amphibious ill-born mob began that vain, ill-natur'd thing, an Englishman.' (The True-Born Englishman)
Gossip
With the aim of becoming a preacher, he attended Morton's Academy for Dissenters at Newington Green, but became a hosiery merchant instead, and married Mary Tuffley in 1683.
Did u know?
He was born in London, the son of James Foe, a butcher, but changed his name to Defoe from 1695.
What to say
Robinson Crusoe is a myth-making book – right up there with Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy. Defoe's influence on the English novel was enormous and he's still a cracking good read.
Don't say
Didn't he write The Swiss Family Robinson?
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