Defoe, Daniel 1660-1731
English writer and adventurer

Born in Stoke Newington, London, the son of a butcher, he set up in the hosiery trade there in 1683, then joined William III's army in 1688 and up to 1704 strenuously supported the king's party. In Queen Anne's reign he ran into trouble with his famous satire The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), which eventually cost him a ruinous fine, the pillory and imprisonment in Newgate Prison. After his release, he founded a newspaper, The Review (1704-13), which aimed at being an organ of commercial interests, but also expressed opinions on political and domestic topics, and included the feature the 'Scandal Club', anticipating such magazines as Tatler and the Spectator. From 1704 he undertook various secret commissions for the Tory minister Robert Harley, including dubious dealings with the Scottish commissioners for Union in 1706-07. He turned to writing fiction after 1714, and in 1719-20, at the age of nearly 60, published his best-known book, Robinson Crusoe. His other major fictions include Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Moll Flanders (1722), his most vivid and still one of the best tales of low life, and Roxana (1724). A writer of astonishing versatility, he published more than 250 works in all, among them a three-volume travel book (Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 1724-27), The Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) and Augusta Triumphans, or the Way to make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe (1728).

Bibliography: P Rogers, Defoe: the critical heritage (1972); B Fitzgerald, Defoe, a History of Conflict (1954)