Daniel Defoe (1660-1725)Such ambitious debates on society and human nature ran parallel with the explorations of a literary form finding new popularity with a large audience, the novel. Daniel Defoe came to sustained prose fiction late in a career of quite various, often disputatious writing. The variety of interests that he had pursued in all his occasional work (much of which is not attributed to him with any certainty) left its mark on his more-lasting achievements. His distinction, though earned in other fields of writing than the polemical, is constantly underpinned by the generous range of his curiosity. 1701, The True-Born Englishman1702, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters1704, thrice-weekly The Review1709, History of the Union

Only someone of his catholic interests could have sustained, for instance, the superb Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27). This is a vivid county-by-county review and celebration of the state of the nation, which combines an antiquarian’s enthusiasm with a passion for trade and commercial progress. It is an informed, scrupulous account of an expanding nation. He brought the same diversity of enthusiasms into play in writing his novels.He starts writing fiction in his middle age, capitalising on his experience of other genres – the polemic pamphlet, biography, history, travel book. He seeks the impression of realism, with puritan self-confessions narratives which read like fictional moral tracts. Prose fiction is supposed to be an instructor and entertainer, apt for the new age of increased literacy and leisure. Defoe answers the need for easily assimilated, morally serious, realist literature bearing the significations of private experience outside the realm of aristocrats or monarchs.

The first of these, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), an immediate success at home and on the Continent, is a unique fictional blending of the traditions of Puritan spiritual autobiography with an insistent scrutiny of the nature of man as social creature and an extraordinary ability to invent a sustaining modern myth. The novel reveals the rewards of private moral zeal, and the workings of spiritual rather than political justice. Crusoe is the ideal narrator choice, with his experience of a redemption journey back to grace. His cultivation of the soil parallels that of the spirit. His taking possession of the island mirrors English colonisation – a king with ‘an undoubted right of dominion’. He rules as an absolute Lord and Law giver, while promoting a Liberty of Conscience. His triumph is that of the human will over an alien environment. He is a lonely exile who logs the nature of moral survival and the grace of a benign God. The sequel Further Adventures does not rise to the initial success. 1720 – The Adventures of Captain Singleton A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) displays enticing powers of self-projection into a situation of which Defoe can only have had experience through the

narrations of others, and both Moll Flanders (1722) and The Fortunate Mistress, Roxana (1724) lure the reader into puzzling relationships with narrators the degree of whose own self-awareness is repeatedly and provocatively placed in doubt. ‘The Fable is always made for the Moral, not the Fable for the Moral. (Preface to Moll Flanders) 1722 – The History of the Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacques: ‘Perhaps when I wrote these things down, I did not foresee, that the Writings of our own Stories would be so much the fashion in England, or as agreeable to read as I find Custom, and the Humour of the Times has caused it to be. One private mean person’s life may be many ways made Useful and Instructing to those who read them, if moral and religious Improvement and reflections are made by those that write them.’ 1724 – Memoirs of a Cavalier