Daniel Defoe was an English writer, journalist, and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders, if not the founder, of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.
The French ‘De’ was a later affectation. Daniel Foe was born in around 1660, though the exact date is unknown. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665, an event he would later document in a work of part-fiction, part non-fiction, his Journal of the Plague Year. During the Great Fire of London a year later, in 1666, Defoe was almost caught up in the blaze: of all the houses in his neighbourhood, only Defoe’s and two other houses remained standing.
When the rebel army was defeated, Defoe (or plain Foe as he then was) narrowly avoided being sentenced to hanging at the Bloody Assizes, presided over by none other than the infamous Judge Jeffreys.
In 1703, he was put in the pillory for writing a satirical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, attacking the treatment of religious dissenters in England. But far from assaulting Defoe with stones and rotten fruit, the crowd reportedly threw flowers at the writer. They also chanted Defoe’s own ‘Hymn to the Pillory’ in support, and raised a glass to him.
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