The name Daniel Defoe will never fail to conjure the picture of the shipwrecked sailor. Daniel, the prolific writer, was born in London in 1660, the third child and first son of James and Mary Foe. Daniel added the prefix ‘De’ to his second name later in life. 

His parents intended him to become a minister, but young Daniel had different plans. His parents provided him with a good education. However, he could not attend Oxford or Cambridge as this meant taking an oath of loyalty to the Church of England, as it was then, and the Defoes were Presbyterians. He was an excellent student, a grounding that stood him in good stead as a journalist, writer and novelist.

Daniel graduated in 1679, by which time he had decided against becoming a minister and instead chose to become a hosiery merchant. His business took him on several trips to Western Europe.

On January 1, 1684, he married Mary Tuffley, an heiress whose dowry amounted to £3,700. However, in 1692, his business went bust and he was declared bankrupt.

Defoe was actively involved in an unsuccessful rebellion against the Roman Catholic King, James II, by the Duke of Monmouth. After the failed rebellion, he travelled around the continent for three years and published anti-James II pamphlets.

Daniel tried his hands at the business of bricks and tiles, when the hosiery business failed. He secured a government job in 1695 and in the same year wrote An Essay upon Projects, skilfully dissecting public issues such as education of women.

Although Defoe did not make a name as a poet, his satiric poem The True-born Englishman (1701), an attack on beliefs in racial or national superiority, was a great success. The poem was so well known that many a time he took to signing his name as the True-born Englishman.

Daniel followed this with The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), a tract that satirised religious intolerance in the guise of sharing prejudices of the Anglican Church against non-conformists, written anonymously.

Some time, during the next calendar year, it became public knowledge that it was Defoe’s pen that had been at work and he was imprisoned for an indeterminate period. However, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Robert Harley, got him out of prison, reportedly on the condition that he would become a propagandist for the government.

While he was languishing in jail, his business was ruined and he turned to professional writing. He brought out a tri-weekly news journal, The Review, where he strongly advocated union with Scotland.

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Defoe's first novel was published in 1719. It was based on the adventures of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned on one of the Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile.

His other novels included Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720) and The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1722). The last novel earned him the reputation of being a social historian.

Daniel also wrote extensively on current economic issues and the problems of long term colonisation and exploration. Some of his other well-known works included A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, Roxana, A General History of the Pirates and The Complete English Tradesman.

His travelogue, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-1727), was considered unusual for his time because he had actually travelled to the places he had written about.

The world lost a brilliant journalist, prolific writer (he is said to have written more than five hundred pamphlets, tracts, novels and other works) and novelist when Defoe breathed his last on April 24, 1731, at Cripplegate.

Back