DANIEL DEFOE
The author of
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, was born into a family who were Dissenters*,
people who did not believe in certain practices of the Church of England. Young Daniel was brought
up in the strict yet independent beliefs of the Dissenters. At 14 he was sent to a Dissenters' academy.
In addition to the traditional Latin and Greek, he studied French, Italian, Spanish, and history and
became especially well-educated in geography. He studied for the ministry, but instead of becoming a
priest, in 1685 he went into business. Engaged in foreign trade, he visited France and lived in Spain
for a time. Meanwhile he was writing and speculating financially, but Defoe was more interested in
writing than in conducting business. His lively mind was taken up with problems of the day. In
pamphlets, verse and periodicals, he called for reforms and advances in religious practices,
economics, social welfare and politics. In his "Essay on Projects", he suggested a national bank, as
well as ideas to help reform bankruptcy laws, asylums and academies of learning. He stressed the
need for tolerance, often using satire for emphasis. In 1702 he wrote a pamphlet titled "The Shortest
Way with Dissenters", satirizing the persecution of Dissenters. The government arrested him. After
some months in prison, he was released through the influence of Robert Harley, a statesman who
became his patron. In 1704, Defoe started
The Review, a periodical. It was the first of many such
periodicals with which Defoe was connected-forerunners of the modern newspaper. As people of that
era did not care for fiction, Defoe wrote "true histories" of pirates and thieves, spicing facts with his
own imagination. In 1719 he published
Robinson Crusoe, which was drawn from the experiences and
memoirs of a British sailor, Alexander Selkirk.
*An English Protestant who dissents is some way from Church of England Dogma
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