DOCSLIB.ORG

A DEFOE COMPANION This Page Intentionally Left Blank a Defoe Com.Panion

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A DEFOE COMPANION This Page Intentionally Left Blank a Defoe Com.Panion A DEFOE COMPANION This page intentionally left blank A Defoe Com.panion J. R. Hammond !50th YEAR M Barnes & Noble Books © J. R. Hammond 1993 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1993 978-0-333-51328-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1993 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Hound mills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2.XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world This book is published in Macmillan's Literary Companions series A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-38924-7 ISBN 978-0-230-37470-6 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/ 9780230374706 First published in the United States of America 1993 by BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS 4720 Boston Way Lanham, MD 20706 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hammond, J. R. (John R.), 1933- A Defoe companion I J. R. Hammond. P· em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-389-21006-1 1. Defoe, Daniel, 1661 ?-1731-Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title. PR3407.H35 1993 823'.6-dc20 92-39387 CIP Hail to thee, spirit of Defoe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee! England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them easier far than Defoe. George Borrow, Lavengro This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Plates viii Preface lX Author's Note Xl PART I The Making of a Novelist 3 Defoe's Literary Achievement 17 A Defoe Dictionary 40 Key to the Characters and Locations 45 PART II The Shorter Fiction 61 Robinson Crusoe 67 Memoirs of a Cavalier 80 Captain Singleton 86 Moll Flanders 95 A Journal of the Plague Year 106 Colonel Jack 118 Roxana 127 A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain 136 Appendix 144 References 146 Bibliography 149 Index 151 vii List of Plates 1. Defoe in the pillory 2. Title-page of the first edition of Robinson Crusoe 3. Frontispiece to the first edition of Robinson Crusoe 4. London market scene, c. 1720 5. The handwriting of Defoe 6. The great plague of London For the proviSIOn of illustrations, and permission to reproduce them, grateful acknowledgements are made to: Hulton Picture Company (1); British Library (2, 3, 5); Kenneth Monkman (4); Welcome Institute Library, London (6). viii Preface Daniel Defoe occupies a central place in the history of English liter­ ature. As the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders he can claim with some justification to be the first English novelist and the father of the novel as we know it today. He was one of the earliest practitioners of the 'desert island' myth which has proved to be such a seminal influence on the human imagination. In A Journal of the Plague Year and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain he forged a distinctive documentary style which deeply influenced later writers, including Poe, Stevenson, Wells and Orwell. This Companion aims to present Defoe afresh and to reappraise him from a late twentieth-century standpoint. An introductory chapter presents an overview of his life and times, tracing the forces which shaped him as man and writer. This is followed by a summary of his literary achievement, discussing in particular his pioneering approach to the novel and his strengths and weaknesses as a novelist of character. Each of the principal works is then exam­ ined in detail and placed in its literary and biographical context. The Companion also contains a dictionary of the characters and places that have a significant role in the novels, and a checklist of the film versions based on Defoe's works. In summarising his life and achievement and offering a critical overview of his contribu­ tion to the development of the novel the Companion seeks to re­ establish Defoe as a pivotal figure in the history of literature. I would like to acknowledge my indebtedness to a number of critical works which preceded mine, in particular to James Sutherland's excellent biography of Defoe, first published in 1937 and still unsuperseded, and his stimulating Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study. Pat Rogers's works have also been indispensable, especially his volume on Defoe in the Critical Heritage series and his admirable edition of the Tour with its full scholarly apparatus. Details of these and other relevant works will be found in the bibliography. My friend and historian Dr Michael Honeybone has read the draft of the opening chapter and commented helpfully upon it. Norman Page, Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Nottingham, has been helpful and encouraging as always. I also wish to place on record my thanks to the staff of IX X Preface the following libraries: British Library, London; University of Nottingham Library; National Newspaper Library, Colindale; Stoke Newington District Library (London Borough of Hackney). Finally I would like to record my warm appreciation to Joy Bremer for typing the manuscript with such care, and to my wife for her unfailing patience and understanding during the throes of com­ position. J. R. HAMMOND Author's Note The text used for the extracts from Defoe's fiction is that of the World's Classics edition, published by Oxford University Press. Page references in these chapters are to this edition. Page references in the chapter on A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain are to the Penguin Classics edition. Publication details of these editions are given in the Bibliography. xi .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Desire, Villainy, and Capital in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
    THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IMAGINARY WANTS: DESIRE, VILLAINY, AND CAPITAL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE BY SAMUEL TOMAN ROWE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2017 Table of contents List of figures iii Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 1. Consumptive production 6 2. The persecutory plot 21 3. Tragedy and the other Enlightenment 36 I. Moll’s bundles: desire, tragi-comedy, and criminality in Defoe 42 1. The picaresque, the providential, the tragi-comic 44 2. Fortune, mastery, and the picaresque 54 3. The projector’s fortune, the tradesman’s bait 65 4. Bundles and baits 72 II. “Strange Diligence”: Lovelace and the rake ethic 90 1. The persecutory plot in Richardson 93 2. Strange diligence 99 3. Hedonism without heart 107 4. Smith’s shop 117 5. “Visionary gratification” and tragedy 126 III. Beckford’s insatiable caliph: oriental despotism and consumer society 129 1. The Asiatic mode of consumption 136 2. Luxuriance, privation, and the market 143 3. Beyond the palace of the senses 149 4. Enameling the sensorium 159 5. Damnation, the gaze, and sociality 164 IV. Matthew Lewis and the gothic face 174 1. The persecutory plot in romantic fiction 179 2. Gothic faciality 187 3. Lewis: capital accumulation and the flaming eye 203 Bibliography 217 ii List of figures 1. Sketch of Vathek’s tower attributed to William Beckford, c. 1843-4. Page 151. 2. Bookplate from William Lane’s circulating library. Page 202.
    [Show full text]
  • Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, the Fortunate Mistress
    THE MORAL PDEPOSS OJ B3F0S'3 KOKJE HISTORIES: COLONEL JACK, MOLL FIANDHSS, CAFTAIE SINGLETON, THS FOETOTATE MISIREES (EOX^IIA) by CLAYTON LOUIS KAUPP B, A., Fort Kays Kansas Stats College, A MASTER'S REPORT submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS Deparfensnt of English KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 19S3 Approved by; ^ZZILk- Major Professor TABLE OF CONTESTS 1 I. THE NATURE OF GENTILITY A. Illustrated by Singleton's African gentleman B. Discovered by the rogues C. Differentiated from aristocracy D. Misrepresented by certain types 1, Tradesman-sportsman 2, Gentleman thief E. Embodied by various occupations 1. True-bred merchant 2. Gentleman soldier 3. Gentleman planter F. Defined primarily as economic security II. THE PREREQUISITES TO ATTAINMENT OF THE STATUS (THE NECESSARY "ECONOMIC VIRTUES") 10 A. Honesty B, Gratitude C. Utility D. Courage E, Meroy 1. Reform, the outgrowth of mercy 2. Gentility, the result of reform F, Consciousness and selflessness III. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES 26 A. Suitable appearance B. Genteel attainments C. Marital bliss IV. DANGERS OF SECONDARY OBJECTIVES 29 A.. Marital excess B. Dueling C. Tihoring D. "Fooling and toying" E. Luxury F. Private ventures on foreign soils G. Drinking V. THE IDEAL BEGINNING FOE VSOULD-BE GENTILITY 39 (Attainment of genteel status fe.g., Moll, Jack, and BobJ and °voidance of common errors fe.g., Bobj was possible without a suitable education. However, the rogues 1 lives were not a desirable pattern.) A, Practical education 1. For women also 2. About value of money 3. About one f s expectations 4. For self control B, Spiritual education (to develop awareness of Providential intervention) 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Una-Theses-0680.Pdf
    THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA GRADUATE SCHOOL Report of Committee on Thesis The undersigned, acting as a Committee of the Graduate School, have read the accompanying thesis submitted by Sue M. Burton for the degree of Master of Arts. They approve it as a thesis meeting the require­ ments of the Graduate School of the University of iinnesota, and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of L..aster of Arts. C. a.11?~512 Ch irman 10-20 SM THE UNIVERSITY OF ESOT GRADUATE SCHOOL Report • of Committee on Examination This is to certify that e the un ersigned, as a commit ee of he Graduate School, have given Sue B rton final oral exam·nat1on for the degree of ster of Arts e recommend that the d ree of ster of Arte be conferred upon the can idate. ~......... liilil ........ ._. __ iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii--- A COla'ARISO f OF THE PIC ARESQUE METHODS OF DEFOE AND LESAGE .. •.. .. .... ... ... .... ······ : ::~::·.::. :.·· .. :: ·.: : ::· ·... : ·: : ·.· : .. : ·.... : : : .... ~: :: : :·.: :~: ::· ::· :··::· ..... : ·.·: : : ·.: : ··: : .... : ....· : : .· . .... .... ... .... .. .. .. ..... .. .. .... .. .. ... Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduat e School of the University of innesota by Sue . Burton ' In partial fulfillment of t he requi rements for the degree of aster of Arts J e 1 2 A Comparison of tbe Picaresque Methods of Defoe and Lesage. Tbe following comparison of the picaresque methods employed by Lesage and Defoe is limited to Le Diable Boiteux and Gil Blas of Lesage, Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders of Defoe. Sources are considered only as they relate to the methods of the two writers. The introductory chapter on the Spanish novela picaresca is included to make the later discussion more in­ telligible.
    [Show full text]
  • 6 X 10.5 Long Title.P65
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-67505-5 - The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe Edited by John Richetti Index More information INDEX Act of Uniformity (1662), 163 Colonel Jack, 40, 58, 69, 71, 84–85, 86, 89, Addison, Joseph, and Richard Steele, The 94, 95, Spectator, 25, 26, 39, 42, 227 compared with Moll Flanders, 73–79 adventure fiction and global realities, 60–62 urban realism, 128–29, 173–74, 179 and the link between overseas and urban commerce, adventure, and imperial design, realities 60 and Christianity 47 Africa as negative pole of commercial world, Complete English Tradesman, The 19, 69, 92, 56–57 99, 108 Annesley, Arthur, 5th Earl of Anglesey, 37 instructions and advice to tradesmen, Annesley, Samuel, Foe family minister, 163 170–71 Ashmole, Elias, History of the Order of the moral optimism, 212 Garter, 113 politeness decoded in shop negotiation, 178 Aubrey, Miscellanies, 113 territory of trade in London, 169–70 Congreve, William, 232 Baker, Henry, Defoe’s son-in-law, 39 Cowley, Abraham, 233 Beattie, John, 66 Craftsman, The, and Tory ideology, 42 Behn, Aphra, 233 crime wave of 1720s, 39–40, 65–67 Bishop, Elizabeth, “Crusoe in England,” 182 Cromwell, Oliver, 11 Blackmore, Richard Sir, 11 Crouch, Nathaniel, The English Empire in A Satyr against Wit, 231 America, 49 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 1st Earl of, 36 Curll, Edmund, 1 Bunyan, John, 211 currency crises in Defoe’s time, 90–91 Butler, Samuel, 211, 227 Dampier, William, 55 Camden, William, Britannia, source for Davis, Lennard, 124 Defoe’s Tour, 112–13, defoe, daniel
    [Show full text]
  • Colonel Jack
    “My Fellow-Servants”: Othering and Identification in Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack Catherine Fleming !"# E$O%&MOUS H#(O of Daniel Defoe’s 1722 Colonel Jack, brother to Captain /ac0 and Major Jac0, spends m2ch of the boo0 atte pting to craft his identity thro2gh his relationships to others3 Jac0’s identity, and partic2larly the connection between his na e and the Union Jac0, attracted the attention of early scholars, b2t c2rrent research is ost invested in Jac0’s intersections with iss2es of race and colonialis . There are few st2dies which foc2s pri arily on Colonel Jack, b2t the novel is increasingly recogni5ed in a1or scholarly wor0s, s2ch as Dennis Todd’s Defoe’s America, which disc2ss the racist colonial syste of North A erica d2ring the 16th and 17th cent2ries3 Altho2gh us2ally disc2ssed in the context of Defoe’s other narratives rather than on its own merits, Colonel Jack has m2ch to reco end it to modern scholarshi.3 With a hero that travels thro2gho2t the United Kingdo , France, and the A ericas, and a plot which evo0es parallels between A erican servit2de and stories of English en enslaved in M2slin %orth Africa, Colonel Jack is partic2larly interesting for its de.iction of international connections and conflicts3 Jac0’s o-servations on the Irish, the Scots, the French, the 6 ericans, and the S.anish settlers of So2th A erica o<er a fascinating st2dy of how perce.tions of national and racial di<erence shape personal identification, the constr2ction of class syste s, and the social str2ct2res that acco .anied the colonial syste of coerced la-o2r3 Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe & His Contemporaries 11, no.
    [Show full text]
  • Defoe's Writing and Manliness
    77 Book Reviews Defoe’s Writing and Manliness: Contrary Men, by Stephen H. Gregg. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009. Pp. ix +197. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-7546-5605-0. Stephen H. Gregg has written a timely and much-needed study of Daniel Defoe. It is remarkable to think that a writer of Defoe’s stature, who is as concerned as he is with the proper attributes of manliness, has not been the subject of a study like this before now. But in Gregg he has found the right person to explore this topic and to contextualize it in a way that makes it as valuable for gender and sexuality studies as it is for Defoe studies themselves. The book is organized simply and revealingly. After an introduction that discusses how deeply Defoe was concerned with the question of manliness, which he placed in opposition to effeminacy, Gregg organizes the material into six chapters. The first two concern polemical works, like The True-Born Englishman as well as The Complete English Tradesman. Then there are chapters on Robinson Crusoe, The Journal of the Plague Year, Captain Singleton, and Colonel Jack. In the midst of these chapters, he discusses a great deal of minor works as well as Defoe’s poetry, and by the end of the study a reader feels that he or she has been in the company of a scholar steeped in the work of Daniel Defoe. Gregg is steeped as well in a wealth of critical and theoretical material that puts him in touch with cultural, gender, and sexuality studies and makes this work far richer as a result.
    [Show full text]
  • Law in the Atlantic and the Form of Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack
    Episodic or Novelistic? Law in the Atlantic and the Form of Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack Gabriel Cervantes abstract Like other fictions by Daniel Defoe, The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Col. Jacque, Commonly Call’d Col. Jack, draws together various literary genres. Until recently, this heterogeneity has been studied through a mode of ideological critique that privileges novelistic coherence, and Colonel Jack has long been dismissed as an ideological and aesthetic failure. Taking a different approach, this article examines how Defoe’s ostensibly broken novel uses a mixture of genres and analogous rather than progressive plot lines to capture and resolve a contemporary prob lem: the stretching of British legal authority from internal struggles (with criminals, slaves, and Jacobites) to the permeable interimperial boundaries of the Atlantic. Histori- cized in the development of the illicit trade between Britain and Spanish America, Colonel Jack’s famously problematic conclusion—a remorseless smuggler’s adventure—does not offer a negative example for mercantile morality, but rather serves to theorize a legal regime based on negotiation. nineteenth- and twentieth-century conceptions of the novel have been retrospectively projected onto earlier, incipient fields of fictional writing.1 In English, this projection has been especially apparent in studies of early eighteenth-century literature where the term “novel” has long been used with little concern over his- torical accuracy. Using the example of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana (first published in 1724), recent studies by Nicholas Seager and Mary Poovey have shown such processes of reinterpretation were already at work by 1740 when the model of domestic fiction ab- sorbed earlier works and the continuum between fact and fiction began to break apart.2 These realizations are crucial, but, as I 1 Homer Obed Brown traces one such lineage of the “institutionalization” of the novel in his Institutions of the English Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
    [Show full text]
  • “The True-Born Englishman” and the Irish Bull: Daniel Defoe in the “Oxen of the Sun” Episode of Ulysses
    “The True-Born Englishman” and the Irish Bull: Daniel Defoe in the “Oxen of the Sun” Episode of Ulysses Sarah Davison Abstract: This essay uses evidence from the notes that Joyce made in preparation to recapitulate the historical development of English prose style in the “Oxen of the Sun” chapter of Ulysses to identify the traces of Defoe’s works that appear in the text of the Gabler edition. It investigates how Joyce used strategies of (mis)quotation and syntactical imitation to synthesise Defoe’s individual style and mobilise his authorial imprint, both as a stage in the recapitulation of the evolution of English prose and as a means to enact revenge on the narrative heritage of English imperialism. In doing so, it offers a genetic reinterpretation of Defoe’s presence in “Oxen” by the light of “Realism and Idealism in English Literature (Daniel Defoe–William Blake)”, Joyce’s notes for a series of lectures at the Università Popolare, Trieste (1912). Keywords: James Joyce, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, Genetic Criticism, Ulysses, Oxen of the Sun, notesheets, quotations, intertextuality Note on Contributor: Sarah Davison is an Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Nottingham, where she specialises in modernist literature. She has published articles on Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Max Beerbohm. Her first book, Modernist Literatures: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism, was published by Palgrave in 2014. She is currently completing a second monograph, Parody and Modernist Literature. Her contribution to this essay collection is one outcome of a larger project entitled “Intertextual Joyce: The Genesis of the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ Episode of Ulysses” for which she received a British Academy Small Research Grant.
    [Show full text]
  • Daniel Defoe, Roxana Bibliographie Sélective
    Agrégation session 2018 Emmanuelle Peraldo (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3) Daniel Defoe, Roxana Bibliographie sélective Les articles ou ouvrages particulièrement utiles dans le cadre de la préparation au concours sont en caractères gras. * Lorsqu’ils sont précédés d’une étoile, ce sont les textes à consulter en priorité. SOURCES PRIMAIRES Editions de Roxana - Edition au programme DEFOE, Daniel. Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. John Mullan, éd. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 2008. - Autres éditions à consulter Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. Robert Clark éd. London: Everyman paperbacks, 1998. Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. Jane Jack éd. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 1996. Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. David Blewett éd. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982. The Novels of Daniel Defoe. W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank éds. 10 vols. London; Brookfield, Vt.: Pickering & Chatto. Volume 9: The Fortunate Mistress. 1724. 2008-2009. - Traduction Lady Roxana, ou l’heureuse maîtresse. Traduit par B.G. de Saint-Héraye, publié en 1886 à la Librairie générale illustrée, Paris, repris dans Daniel Defoe, Lady Roxana, traduit par B.G. de Saint-Héraye, postface par Fançois Rivière, Paris: Editions Autrement, 1993. Autres œuvres de Defoe intéressantes à lire pour éclairer Roxana - Ses romans Robinson Crusoe. 1719. London, New York: A Norton Critical Edition, Michael Shinagel éd. Harvard University, 2ème édition, 1995 Captain Singleton. 1720. Oxford: Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 1969. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1722. London, New York: A Norton Critical Edition, Paula R. Backscheider éd. The University of Rochester, Norton, 1992 Colonel Jack.
    [Show full text]
  • Servitude, Slavery, and Ideology in the 17Th-And 18Th-Century Anglo-American Atlantic
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ THE COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHIES OF SERVITUDE: SERVITUDE, SLAVERY, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE 17TH-AND 18TH-CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN ATLANTIC A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Laura E. Martin September 2012 The Dissertation of Laura E. Martin is approved: _________________________________ Professor Susan Gillman, co-chair _________________________________ Professor Jody Greene, co-chair _________________________________ Professor Carla Freccero _________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Laura E. Martin 2012 Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………… vii Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One “Servants Have the Worser Lives”: The Poetics and Rhetorics of Servitude and Slavery in Inkle and Yarico’s Barbados …………………………. 31 Part One: The Invention of Inkle and Yarico and the Servant Problem Paradigm I. Ligon’s “Yarico,” Servant Mistreatment, and the Colonial Transition to Capitalism …………………………….. 35 II. Steele’s “Inkle,” the Abstraction of Paternalism, and the Disavowal of Colonial Servitude ……………………………... 50 Part Two: Servitude Mediation in Inkle and Yarico’s Long Century of Adaptation I. Inkle and Yarico’s Heroic Epistle Phase I: Servitude Mediation and the Poetics of Debt and Indenture …………………….. 61 II. Inkle and Yarico’s Heroic Epistle Phase II: Disciplining Mercantilism and the Peculiar Transformations of Class in the English Civil War ………………………………………. 84 III. The Reemergence of Colonial Servants: Paternalism as Cultural Dictate and Inkle and Yarico in Drama and Prose …………… 96 IV. Slave Pastoralism, Chapman’s Barbadoes, and Paternalism as Class Divide: Re-collectivizing Servant and Slave Imaginaries …….. 138 Chapter Two The Myth of Convict America in Oroonoko’s Surinam: The Contradictions of Colonial Servitude and Slavery in Behn’s “Other World” …………………..
    [Show full text]
  • Daniel Defoe [Extract] Like the Novelist and Ex-Convict Jeffrey Archer, Daniel Defoe’S Career Spanned Both Debt and High Politics, Authorship and Imprisonment
    Terry Eagleton, The English Novel: An Introduction (Wiley Blackstock 2005) Note: this copy has been made from a PDF version of the 2005 Wiley Blackwell edition. The footnotes in that edition have been transposed here from end-of-book to end of chapter and the the page-numbers have been omitted. Minor corrections have been made to the original where necessary – as the inconsistent title-form, “The True Born Englishman” / The True Born Englishman). Chapter 2: Daniel Defoe [extract] Like the novelist and ex-convict Jeffrey Archer, Daniel Defoe’s career spanned both debt and high politics, authorship and imprisonment. Chronologically speaking, art followed life in Defoe’s career, since he began writing most of his works as an activist. In another sense, however, his life imitated his art, since it was a career quite sensationalist enough for one of his own novels. He was at various times a hosiery, wine and tobacco merchant, brick factory owner, political turncoat, underground political informant, secret government agent and spin doctor or state propagandist. He took part in an armed rebellion against James II, travelled extensively in Europe, and played a key role in the historic negotiations by which the kingdoms of England and Scotland were politically united. Defoe was bankrupted more than once, imprisoned for debt, and sentenced to stand in the pillory on a charge of sedition for publishing a satirical pamphlet. He later wrote a ‘Hymn to the Pillory’, as well as publishing a ‘Hymn to the Mob’ in which, scandalously, he praised the mob for its soundness of judgement.
    [Show full text]
  • Defoe's America
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-19581-2 - Defoe’s America Dennis Todd Excerpt More information chapter Defoe’s America Near the end of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Moll returns to America with her new husband, Jemy. They disembark on the Virginia shore of the Potomac, as bad luck would have it, near her son’s plantation where her former husband (who is also her brother) lives. Moll, desperate to keep her past and present lives from colliding, convinces Jemy that they should seek their fortunes elsewhere. They pitch on Carolina as a place to settle. “We began to make enquiry for Vessels going to Carolina, and in a very little while got information, that on the other side of the Bay … in Maryland there was a Ship, which came from Carolina, loaden with Rice, and other Goods” (MF, p. 265). They were, Moll says, “full a hundred Miles upPotowmack River, in a part which they call Westmoreland Country” (MF, p. 265). They sail five days down the Potomac and across the Chesapeake Bay to the Maryland Eastern Shore, a “full two hundred Mile” (MF, pp. 265–266). They land at “Phillips’s Point,” where they had hoped to board the Carolina ship, but it has already departed. We immediately went on Shore, but found no Conveniences just at that Place, either for our being on Shore, or preserving our Goods on Shore, but was directed by a very honest Quaker, who we found there to go to a Place, about sixty Miles East; that is to say, nearer the Mouth of the Bay, where he said he liv’d, and where we would be Accommodated, either to Plant, or to wait for any other Place to Plant in, that might be more Convenient.
    [Show full text]