DANIEL DE FOE
English author (1660-1731)
Biography:
As one of the best-known writers throughout the world for having written Robinson Crusoe in 1719, Daniel Defoe lived a very interesting life, which made him one of the most important figures of English literature.
Daniel Foe, renamed Daniel De Foe, was bron in London in September 1660. He came from a modest background and studied at Stoke Newington. He plunged into politics and trade, travelling to Spain, France, Italy and Germany but his business ventures failed and left him with large debts. However, he managed to earn a living by his pen.
In 1683 he settled down in England, where he married Mary Tuffley and had seven children. From a political point of view, he was involved in Mommouth Revellion against James II and favoured William d'Orange's ascension to the throne by joining his army in 1688.
In 1701, he wrote a poem called "The True-Born Englishman" which became the best-selling poem ever at that time. In 1702 Defoe wrote his famous pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, mimicking the extreme attitudes of Anglican Tories. He was arrested, and while in prison, he wrote the mock ode Hymn to the Pillory.
As a journalist, he founded Review in 1704, renamed Mercator after 1713. Much ahead of his times, he advocated for feminism and tried to favour schools for girls.
He died in Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields, in 1731.
Daniel De Foe, writer:
He has gone down in history as a great novelist and he is even considered by some critics to be the founder of the English novel. Aiming at mystification and literary accuracy, De Foe presented all his novels as autobiographies and never signed them. After a carreer as satire writer and journalist, he began writing favoulous stories. In 1722 he published Colonel Jack and The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, inspired in a real character. His last great work of fiction, Roxana, appeared in 1724.
Author of Robinson Crusoe:
Robinson Crusoe (published in 1719) is based on the real story of William Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who went to sea in 1704 under William Dampier and was put ashore at his own request on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, where he survived until his rescue in 1709 by Woodes Rogers.
Robinson is a mariner who takes to the sea despite his parental warnings. As a first person narrator and focalizer, Crusoe narrates his lonely life in the island where he shipwrecked: how he managed to build a place to live, to grow things to feed himself. In short, he manages to survive in the island and come to terms with his own spiritual life.
His enterprising behaviour and his adaptation to alien environments have turned Robinson into a symbol of work, the individual fight against solitude. Robinson Crusoe is also an epic, glorifying the economic, moral and religious values of an European man.
His meeting with a native, christened by Crusoe as Friday, his slave, arises the problem of unequal treatment among human beings. It was Rousseau who described Robinson Crusoe as "the best treaty on natural education".
Daniel De Foe, author of illustrated works:
An Essay upon Projects, 1695.
The True-born Englishman, 1701.
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, 1702.
History of the Union, 1709.
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (Robinson Crusoe), 1719.
Memoirs of a Cavalier, 1720.
Captain Singleton, 1720.
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (Moll Flanders), 1722.
A Journal of the Plague Year, 1722.
Colonel Jack, 1722.
Roxana, 1724.
A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-1727.
A General History of the Pirates, 1724-1728.
The Complete English Tradesman, 1725-1727.
Robinson Crusoe, illustrated by Newell Coners Wyeth, Cosmopolitan, 1920, 14 ill.
Robinson Crusoé, illustrated by Valdemar Andersen, s.d.