Robinson Crusoe, as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea

1.2. Daniel Defoe and his personality

(1660-1731) Daniel Defoe is famous was an English novelist, journalist and pamphleteer, famous for "Robinson Crusoe," "Moll Flanders," "Memoirs of a Cavalier," and many other works. He was one of the founders of the English novel. Read more about the life and works of Daniel Defoe.

1) Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas by Macmillan E. Novak. Oxford University Press. From the publisher: "Novak illuminates such works as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, novels that changed the course of fiction in their time and have remained towering classics to this day. And he reveals a writer who was a superb observer of his times—an age of dramatic historical, Daniel Defoe is perhaps best known for his novels, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, but he was also the quintessential "brilliant scoundrel" of the Augustan Age. In rough chronological order, Daniel Defoe was a hosier, soldier, wine merchant, factory owner, bankrupt, spy, pamphleteer, and convict, journalist, editor, political flunkey, hack writer and novelist.
In 1704, he launched the Review of the Affairs of France and of all Europe, one of the first serious political and economic newspapers in England (it folded in the aftermath of the 1712 Stamp Act). He served as editor on several other newspapers later. As a trader and nonconformist, Defoe's produced several political and social commentaries hailing the dawn of the bourgeois-capitalist age.
In the service of Robert Harley, a shadowy figure of Queen Anne's reign, Defoe's produced a detailed three-volume (1724-27) account of the economic, political and social conditions of the cities and country-sides of Great Britain. His talent was dissipated in later years when, as a political journalist, he compromised his independence as a reporter in return for political favors.
Born Daniel Foe, the son of James Foe, a butcher in Stoke Newington, London He later added the aristocratic sounding "De" to his name as a nom de plume. He became a famous pamphleteer, journalist and novelist at a time of the birth of the novel in the English language, and thus fairly ranks as one of its progenitors.⁸
Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on July 31, 1703. Principally on account of a pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with Dissenters", in which he ruthlessly satirized the High church Tories, purporting to argue for the extermination of dissenters. The publication of his poem Hymn to the Pillory, however, caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects, and to drink to his health.
After his three days in the pillory Defoe went into Negate Prison. Robert Harley. 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's co-operation as an intelligence agent. He set up his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France in 1704, supporting the Harley ministry. The Review ran without interruption until 1713. When Harley lost power in 1708 Defoe continued writing it to support Go dolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710 to 1114. After the Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne. Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government.
Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), tells of a man's shipwreck on a desert island and his subsequent adventures. The author may have based his narrative on the true story of the shipwreck of Alexander Selkirk. (Sec Robinson Crusoe: Selkirk as the inspiration for Crusoe).
Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton ( 720), amazing for its portrayal of the redemptive power of one man's love for another. Hans Turley has recently shown how Quaker William's love turns Captain Singleton away from the murderous life of a pirate, and the two make a solemn vow to live as a male couple happily ever after in London, disguised as Greeks and never speaking English in public, with Singleton married to William's sister as a ruse.⁹
Defoe wrote an account of the Great Plague of 1665: A Journal of the Plague Year.
He also wrote Moll Flanders (1722), a picaresque first-person narration of the fall and eventual redemption of a lone woman in 17th century England. She appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives in The Mint, commits adultery and incest, yet manages to keep the reader's sympathy. This work and Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress (1724) offer remarkable examples of the way in which Defoe seems to inhabit his fictional (yet "drawn from life") characters, not least in that they are women.
Daniel Defoe died on April 21. 1731 and was interred in Bun hill Fields. London. Defoe and the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707
No fewer than 545 titles, ranging from satirical poems, political and religious pamphlets and volumes have been ascribed to Defoe. His ambitious business ventures saw him bankrupt by 1692, with a wife and seven children to support. In 1703 he published an ironic attack on the high Tories, and was prosecuted for seditious libel, sentenced to be pilloried, fined 200 marks, and be detained at the Queen's pleasure. In despair he wrote to William Paterson. the London Scot, and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darien Disaster, who was in the confidence of Robert Hartley, leading Minister and spymaster in the English Government. Hartley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.¹⁰
O Email this to a friend
Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660, probably in September, third child and first son of James and Mary Defoe. Daniel received a very good education, as his father hoped he would become ministers, but Daniel wasn't interested. His family was Dissenters, Presbyterians to be precise, and those sects were being persecuted a bit at this time, so maybe Daniel had the right idea. He was always very tolerant of others' religious ideas himself.
His mother died when he was ten, and his father sent him to a boarding school, after which he attended Morison’s Academy, as he could not graduate from Oxford or Cambridge without taking an oath of loyalty to the Church of England. He was a very good student, and his teacher, the Reverend Mr. Norton himself, would later show up as a character in some of Daniel's fiction. Daniel graduated in 1679, and by then he'd pretty much decided against the ministry, though he wrote and spoke in favor of the Dissenters all his lives.
By 1683, Daniel was a successful young merchant, with a storefront in an upscale part of London and no real ideas of becoming a writer at all. On New Year's Day, 1684, he married Mary Truffle, an heiress whose dowry amounted to £3,7004. Later that year, he joined the army of the rebel Duke of Monmouth, who was attempting to take the throne from James Us. When the rebellion failed, Daniel and many other troops were forced into semi-exile. He traveled around the continent for three years, off and on, as both tourist and merchant, and wrote very dangerous, very anti-James II pamphlets. Daniel was very pleased when William and Mary took charge, and wrote in favor of William in particular, but he was in the minority there.
Daniel went bankrupt in 1692. He ended up owing over £17,000, and though he paid off all but £5,000 within ten years, he was never again free of debt. Though he still considered himself a merchant, first and foremost, writing suddenly became a more prominent part of his life. In 1701, he wrote a poem? Called the True-Born Englishman which became the best-selling poem ever at that time. It was so well-known that he signed several of his later works as The True-Born Englishman, and everyone knew exactly what that meant. Still, it was only a pamphlet, which made Daniel the lowest form of writer as far as his contemporaries were concerned. He also started taking on a few "unofficial" government jobs, most notably an assignment to Scotland. There was at that time a movement to finally unify England and Scotland, a movement which was very misunderstood by the average Scotsman. So Daniel tried to explain things to them calmly.
In 1706, he returned to Scotland and started up a newspaper in Edinburgh called the Post-Maniz, which of course tried to put the still-under-construction unification plans in the best possible light. But Daniel, in his eternal quest for truth, actually bothered to learn about Scotland and its people, a rather unusual thing for that time. He also set up a really impressive intelligence-gathering network. The Act of Union was made official on 1 May 1707, and Daniel was out of one job. But he still had his pamphlets to fall back on, so things were all right.¹¹
The first volume of Robinson Crusoe was published on 25 April 171914, and it was a big hit, especially with the lower and middle classes. Since that one worked so well, Daniel published Moll Flanders in 1722, drawing heavily on his experiences in New gate prison to add realisms. This novel got him the label of a social historian, much, much later, of course. The point was, the public ate up this kind of thing, and Daniel wrote lots of it. He also worked for a publisher named Mr. Applebee between 1720 and 1726, who liked to publish lives of condemned criminals. Daniel used to go to prison cells and even the scaffold to receive manuscripts for these lives from the criminals themselves. He sometimes goofed up on dates and numbers, but all of these lives are wonderful studies of character and society, though often a bit too heavy on the moral lessons by today's standards.
Daniel wrote on various economic issues of the day, as well as on the problems of long-term colonization and exploration, showing that he really was paying a lot of attention to everything. He even wrote a travel book, A Tour Thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, which was highly unusual for the time in that he'd actually traveled to the places he wrote about. He was really kind of a Renaissance man, I suppose, though he didn't quite live in the right time period for that. He died in Cripple gate on 24 April 1731, of a lethargy?¹²
Robinson Crusoe is one of the world's most popular adventure novels. Daniel Defoe based his classic tale of shipwreck and survival on an uninhabited island is based on a true story. The real Robinson Crusoe was a Scotsman named Alexander Selkirk (or Secreting).
Born in 1676, when Selkirk was 19 years old he was cited for indecent conduct in church, but before he could be reprimanded, he ran off to sea. That was in 1695. By 1703 he was the sailing master of a galley. The following year he joined a pirate expedition to the Pacific Ocean that was led by Capt. William Dampier. Selkirk's ship had Thomas Straddling as it's captain.
After spending some time in the Pacific and numerous raids on the Spanish towns and shipping, they were preparing to return to England with their booty. Their ship had suffered considerable damage in battle and Selkirk felt they needed to repair her before setting off around the Horn. The captain disagreed. After a heated argument and in a fit of anger, Selkirk refused to go any farther and demanded he be set ashore on the Island of Juan Fernandez. which was about 400 miles off the coast of Chile. This, the captain was glad to do.
Once ashore, Selkirk realized the enormity of what he had done. He thought others in the crew would join him, but none did. He changed his mind and tried to convince the captain to take him back. The captain refused and Selkirk found he had marooned himself alone on an uninhabited island. Actually this was the smart thing to do since the ship later sank killing most of those aboard, but at the time he didn't know this.
After about two years on the island he finally saw a ship and ran down to the shore to greet it. He realized almost too late that it was a Spanish ship and the
Spaniards opened fire on him as he ran for cover. They were unable to find him and eventually left. He was much more cautious after that.
Selkirk was able to domesticate some goats and cats he found on the island and these were his only companions though out his stay of almost 4 1/2 years. He was finally found in February 1709 by William Dampier, who was then pilot on a private ring expedition headed by Captain Woods Rogers.
Rogers appointed Selkirk as ship's mate and later gave him command of captured ship. For the next two years they conducted raids on the coast of Peru and Chile. They even captured a Spanish galleon. Selkirk was very well-off when they returned to London in 1711, as his share of the booty came to £800—a sizable fortune in those days. Selkirk soon met essayist Richard Steele, who wrote up Selkirk's story and published it as "The Englishman" in 1711.¹³
Selkirk eventually returned to his home in Scotland, where he became quite a celebrity. Though he did get married, he never quite recovered from his stay on the island. Spending much of his time alone, he didn't feel comfortable living indoors and built a sort of cave or bower behind his father's house that he stayed in. He also trained two cats to perform little feats, like he did on the island. Eventually he returned to sea and he died of fever off the coast of Africa in 1721 at the age of
While some biographers say Defoe never met Selkirk, others say the two met at the house of Mrs. Demaris Daniel in Bristol, where Selkirk told Defoe firsthand of his adventures and even gave Defoe his personal papers. Either way, there's little doubt Crusoe is largely inspired by Selkirk. He may have also been in Robert Louis Stephenson's mind when he wrote of the marooned pirate Ben Gunn in Treasure Island.
In the novel, Defoe extended Selkirk's 4 1/2 years on the island to Robinson Crusoe's 28 years. He also moved the island from off the coast of Chile far out in the Pacific Ocean to just off the coast of Venezuela. In relation to our main interest—which is pirates and piracy—before Crusoe is shipwrecked on the island he is captured by Moorish pirates from Sallee on the coast of Africa, but soon escapes. And while his rescuers are not exactly pirates, they are in the midst of a mutiny that Crusoe helps put down and brings them back to the straight and narrow.
Even though Robinson Crusoe is a fictional character, like Sherlock Holmes he has crossed over from fiction to fact in the minds of some people. There are evenpeople on the Island of Tobago who claim to be descended from RobinsoCrusoe.