Defoe

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__**Daniel Defoe**__ Born **Daniel Foe**, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel //Robinson Crusoe//. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson, is among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism. []

Defoe's first notable publication was //An Essay upon Projects//, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. His most successful poem, //The True-Born Englishman// (1701), defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity.

A natural target, Defoe's pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled //The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church//, purporting to argue for their extermination. In it he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called "occasional conformity", such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney. Though it was published anonymously, the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested.

Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet (originally published anonymously) entitled //A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September, 1705,// deals with interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. It was most likely written in support of Charles Drelincourt's //The Christian Defense against the Fears of Death// (1651). It describes Mrs. Bargrave's encounter with an old friend Mrs. Veal, after she had died. It is clear from this piece and other writings, that while the political portion of Defoe's life was fairly dominant, it was by no means the only aspect.

The extent and particulars of Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication of //Robinson Crusoe// in 1719 is widely contested. Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute tracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologia //Appeal to Honour and Justice// (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–14). Other works that are thought to anticipate his novelistic career include: //The Family Instructor// (1715), an immensely successful conduct manual on religious duty; //Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager// (1717), in which he impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and //A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy// (1718), a satire on European politics and religion, professedly written by a Muslim in Paris.

His novels include: Defoe also wrote a three-volume travel book, //Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain// (1724-27) that provided a vivid first-hand account of the state of the country. Other non-fiction books include //The Complete English Tradesman// (1726) and //London, the Most Flourishing City in the Universe// (1728). Defoe published over 560 books and pamphlets and is considered to be the founder of British journalism. media type="file" key="A journal final.mp3" width="240" height="20"
 * //Robinson Crusoe// (1719)
 * //The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe// (1719)
 * //Serious reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe: with his Vision of the angelick world// (1720)
 * //Captain Singleton// (1720)
 * //Journal of the Plague Year// (1722)
 * //Colonel Jack// (1722)
 * //Moll Flanders// (1722)
 * //Roxana// (1724)

__A Journal of the Plague Year__ It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound in health, but very impatient of being pent up within doors without air, as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and I could not restrain myself, but I would go to carry a letter for my brother to the post-house. Then it was indeed that I observed a profound silence in the streets. When I came to the post-house, as I went to put in my letter I saw a man stand in one corner of the yard and talking to another at a window, and a third had opened a door belonging to the office. In the middle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not know but the person who dropped it might come back to look for it. I had no such need of money, nor was the sum so big that I had any inclination to meddle with it, or to get the money at the hazard it might be attended with; so I seemed to go away, when the man who had opened the door said he would take it up, but so that if the right owner came for it he should be sure to have it. So he went in and fetched a pail of water and set it down hard by the purse, then went again and fetch some gunpowder, and cast a good deal of powder upon the purse, and then made a train from that which he had thrown loose upon the purse. The train reached about two yards. After this he goes in a third time and fetches out a pair of tongs red hot, and which he had prepared, I suppose, on purpose; and first setting fire to the train of powder, that singed the purse and also smoked the air sufficiently. But he was not content with that, but he then takes up the purse with the tongs, holding it so long till the tongs burnt through the purse, and then he shook the money out into the pail of water, so he carried it in. The money, as I remember, was about thirteen shilling and some smooth groats and brass farthings.

There might perhaps have been several poor people, as I have observed above, that would have been hardy enough to have ventured for the sake of the money; but you may easily see by what I have observed that the few people who were spared were very careful of themselves at that time when the distress was so exceeding great.

It would pierce the hears of all that came by to hear the piteous cries of those infected people, who begin thus out of their understandings by the violence of their pain, or the heat of their blood, were either shut in, or perhaps tied in their beds and chairs, to prevent their doing themselves hurt, and who would make a dreadful outcry at their being confined, and at their not being permitted to “die at large,” as they called it, and as they would have done before.

This often was the reason that, as I have said, we that were examiners were not able to come at the knowledge of the infection being entered into a house till it was too late to shut it up, and sometimes not till the people that were left were all dead. In Petticoat Lane two houses together were infected, and several people sick; but the distemper was so well concealed, the examiner, who was my neighbour, got no knowledge of it till notice was sent him that the people were all dead, and that the carts should call there to fetch them away. The two heads of the families concerted their measures, and so ordered their matters as that when the examiner was in the neighbourhood they appeared generally at a time, and answered, that is, lied, for one another, or got some of the neighbourhood to say they were all in health — and perhaps knew no better — till, death making it impossible to keep it any longer as a secret, the dead-carts were called in the night to both the houses t and so it became public. But when the examiner ordered the constable to shut up the houses there was nobody left in them but three people, two in one house and one in the other, just dying, and a nurse in each house who acknowledged that they had buried five before, that the houses had been infected nine or ten days, and that for all the rest of the two families, which were many, they were gone, some sick, some well, or whether sick or well could not be known. In like manner, at another house in the same lane, a man having his family infected but very unwilling to be shut up, when he could conceal it no longer, shut up himself; that is to say, he set the great red cross upon his door with the words, ‘Lord have mercy upon us’, and so deluded the examiner, who supposed it had been done by the constable by order of the other examiner, for there were two examiners to every district or precinct. By this means he had free egress and regress into his house again. and out of it, as he pleased, notwithstanding it was infected, till at length his stratagem was found out; and then he, with the sound part of his servants and family, made off and escaped, so they were not shut up at all.

It is here, however, to be observed that after the funerals became so many that people could not toll the bell, mourn or weep, or wear black for one another, as they did before; no, nor so much as make coffins for those that died; so after a while the fury of the infection appeared to be so increased that, in short, they shut up no houses at all. It seemed enough that all the remedies of that kind had been used till they were found fruitless, and that the plague spread itself with an irresistible fury; so that as the fire the succeeding year spread itself, and burned with such violence that the citizens, in despair, gave over their endeavours to extinguish it, so in the plague it came at last to such violence that the people sat still looking at one another, and seemed quite abandoned to despair;