Daniel Defoe

Defoe, Daniel 

Born c. 1660 in Cripplegate; died Apr. 26, 1731, in Moorfields. English writer and publicist.

Defoe graduated from a Dissenters’ Academy. He took part in the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion against James II and supported the coup d’etat of 1688-89 (the so-called Glorious Revolution). He began his literary work with An Essay Upon Projects (1697), which proposed certain economic and social reforms. He was the author of pamphlets in defense of civil rights and freedom of the press and of religion; he wrote the satire in verse The True-Born Englishman (1701), which was directed against the aristocrats who discredited William III of Orange for “not being English.” For his pamphlet in defense of religious tolerance, The Shortest Way With Dissenters (1702), he was sentenced to stand in the pillory and was sent to prison. A child of his age, Defoe was not averse to entrepreneurial activity and in the last years of his life was forced to hide from his creditors.

Defoe’s story “Jonathan Wild” (1725) was one of the sources for one of H. Fielding’s satirical novels. Many of Defoe’s novels belong to the adventure genre, such as Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720), and The History of Colonel Jack (1722). Outstanding among these is Moll Flanders (1722; Russian translation, 1896), about a poor young woman driven by social conditions down the road of prostitution and thievery. An especially outstanding work in this genre isRobinson Crusoe (1719; Russian translation, 1762-64), about an English merchant shipwrecked upon an uninhabited island and how he produces everything necessary to sustain life by his own labor. Some bourgeois economists of the 18th and 19th centuries tried to use the example of Robinson to show that material production originally had an individual character. In criticizing the idea of the “robinsonade,” Marx showed that production has a social character at all stages of development (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 12, p. 709). Imbued with enthusiastic industriousness and optimism, Defoe’s novel was highly regarded by J.-J. Rousseau and L. N. Tolstoy and retains its educational value to this day.

WORKS

Novels and Selected Writings, vols. 1-14. Oxford [1927-28].
In Russian translation:
Moll’ Flenders. Moscow, 1965.
Robinzon Kruzo. Moscow-Leningrad, 1959.

REFERENCES

Anikst, A. D. Defo. Moscow, 1957.
Nersesova, M. D. Defo. Moscow, 1960.
Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 1, issue 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945.
Mirimskii, I. “Realizm Defo.” In Realizm XVIII v. na Zapade. Moscow, 1936.
Novak, M. E. Defoe and the Nature of Man. London, 1963.
Starr, G. A. Defoe: Spiritual Autobiography. Princeton, N. J., 1965.
Shinagel, M. Daniel Defoe and Middle-class Gentility. Cambridge, Mass., 1968.

IU. I. KAGARLITSKII