Daniel Defoe (/dɪˈfoʊ/c. 1660 – 24 April 1731)[1] was an English writer, merchant and spy. He is most famous for his novelRobinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations.[2] He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of theEnglish novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such asAphra Behn andSamuel Richardson.[3] Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him.
Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works[4]—books, pamphlets, and journals—on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer ofbusiness journalism[5] and economic journalism.[6]
Daniel Foe was probably born inFore Street in the parish ofSt GilesCripplegate, London.[7] Defoe later added thearistocratic-sounding "De" to his name, and on occasion made the false claim of descent from a family named De Beau Faux.[8] "De" is also a common prefix in Flemish surnames.[9] His birthdate and birthplace are uncertain, and sources offer dates from 1659 to 1662, with the summer or early autumn of 1660 considered the most likely.[10] His father, James Foe, was a prosperoustallowchandler of probableFlemish descent,[11][12][a] and a member of theWorshipful Company of Butchers. His mother, Alice, had died by the time he was about ten.[16][17]
In Defoe's early childhood, he lived through several significant historical events: in 1665, seventy thousand were killed by theGreat Plague of London, and the next year, theGreat Fire of London left only Defoe's and two other houses standing in his neighbourhood.[18] In 1667, when he was probably about seven, a Dutch fleet sailed up theMedway via theRiver Thames and attacked the town ofChatham in theraid on the Medway.
Defoe was educated at the Rev. James Fisher's boarding school in Pixham Lane inDorking, Surrey.[19] His parents werePresbyteriandissenters, and around the age of 14, he was sent toCharles Morton'sdissenting academy atNewington Green, then a village just north of London, where he is believed to have attended theDissenting church there.[20][21] He lived on Church Street, Stoke Newington, at what is now nos. 95–103.[22] During this period, the English government persecuted those who chose to worship outside the establishedChurch of England.
Defoe entered the world of business as a general merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woollen goods, and wine. His ambitions were great and he was able to buy a country estate and a ship (as well ascivets to make perfume), though he was rarely out of debt. On 1 January 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley atSt Botolph's Aldgate.[23] She was the daughter of a London merchant, and brought with her adowry of £3,700—a huge amount by the standards of the day. Given his debts and political difficulties, the marriage may have been troubled, but it lasted 47 years and produced eight children.[16]
In 1685, Defoe joined the ill-fatedMonmouth Rebellion but gained a pardon, by which he escaped theBloody Assizes of JudgeGeorge Jeffreys. QueenMary and her husbandWilliam III were jointly crowned in 1689, and Defoe became one of William's close allies and a secret agent.[16] Some of the new policies led to conflict with France, thus damaging prosperous trade relationships for Defoe.[16] In 1692, he was arrested for debts of £700 and, in the face of total debts that may have amounted to £17,000, was forced to declare bankruptcy. He died with little wealth and evidently embroiled in lawsuits with the royal treasury.[2]
Following his release fromdebtors' prison, he probably travelled in Europe and Scotland,[24] and it may have been at this time that he traded wine toCádiz,Porto andLisbon. By 1695, he was back in England, now formally using the name "Defoe" and serving as a "commissioner of the glass duty", responsible for collecting taxes on bottles. In 1696, he ran a tile and brick factory in what is nowTilbury inEssex and lived in the parish ofChadwell St Mary nearby.
Defoe's first notable publication wasAn Essay Upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698, he defended the right of KingWilliam III to astanding army during disarmament, after theTreaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended theNine Years' War (1688–1697). His most successful poem,The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended William againstxenophobic attacks from his political enemies in England, and English anti-immigration sentiments more generally. In 1701, Defoe presented theLegion's Memorial toRobert Harley, thenSpeaker of the House of Commons—and his subsequent employer—while flanked by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of quality. It demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France.
The death ofWilliam III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval, as the king was replaced byQueen Anne who immediately began her offensive againstNonconformists.[16] Defoe was a natural target, and his pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in apillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of his December 1702 pamphlet entitledThe Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church, purporting to argue for their extermination.[25] In it, he ruthlessly satirised both thehigh churchTories and thoseDissenters who hypocritically practised so-called "occasional conformity", such as hisStoke Newington neighbour SirThomas Abney. It was published anonymously, but the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested.[16] He was charged with seditious libel and found guilty in a trial at theOld Bailey in front of the notoriously sadistic judgeSalathiel Lovell.[6] Lovell sentenced him to a punitive fine of 200marks (£336 then, £71,883 in 2023[26]), to public humiliation in apillory, and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would end only upon the discharge of the punitive fine.[6] According to legend, the publication of his poemHymn to the Pillory caused his audience at the pillory to throw flowers instead of the customary harmful and noxious objects and to drink to his health. The truth of this story is questioned by most scholars,[why?] althoughJohn Robert Moore later said that "no man in England but Defoe ever stood in the pillory and later rose to eminence among his fellow men".[17]
Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there: And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation
After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went intoNewgate Prison.Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, brokered his release in exchange for Defoe's cooperation as an intelligence agent for the Tories. In exchange for such cooperation with the rival political side, Harley paid some of Defoe's outstanding debts, improving his financial situation considerably.[16]
Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed theGreat Storm of 1703, which raged through the night of 26/27 November. It caused severe damage to London andBristol, uprooted millions of trees, and killed more than 8,000 people, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe'sThe Storm (1704), which includes a collection of witness accounts of the tempest.[27] Many regard it as one of the world's first examples of modern journalism.[28]
In the same year, he set up hisperiodicalA Review of the Affairs of France,[29] which supported theHarley Ministry, chronicling the events of theWar of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714). TheReview ran three times a week without interruption until 1713. Defoe was amazed that a man as gifted as Harley left vital state papers lying in the open, and warned that he was almost inviting an unscrupulous clerk to commit treason; his warnings were fully justified by theWilliam Gregg affair.
When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708, Defoe continued writing theReview to supportGodolphin, then again to support Harley and theTories in the Tory ministry of 1710–1714. The Tories fell from power with the death ofQueen Anne, but Defoe continued doing intelligence work for theWhig government, writing "Tory" pamphlets that undermined the Tory point of view.[16]
Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet was originally published anonymously, entitledA 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. It deals with the interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm and was most likely written in support ofCharles Drelincourt'sThe Christian Defence against the Fears of Death (1651). It describes Mrs. Bargrave's encounter with her old friend Mrs. Veal after she had died. It is clear from this piece and other writings that the political portion of Defoe's life was by no means his only focus.
Title page from Daniel Defoe's:The History of the Union of Great Britain dated 1709 and printed in Edinburgh by the Heirs of Anderson
In despair during his imprisonment for the seditious libel case, Defoe wrote toWilliam Paterson, the London Scot and founder of theBank of England and part instigator of theDarien scheme, who was in the confidence ofRobert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster in theEnglish government. Harley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately publishedThe Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting theAct of Union 1707.[30]
Defoe began his campaign inThe Review and other pamphlets aimed at English opinion, claiming that it would end the threat from the north, gaining for the Treasury an "inexhaustible treasury of men", a valuable new market increasing the power of England. By September 1706, Harley ordered Defoe toEdinburgh as a secret agent, and to secure acquiescence by using "underhand methods to predispose Scots' opinion in favour of"[31] theTreaty of Union. He was conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such asThe Letters of Daniel Defoe (edited by G. H. Healey, Oxford 1955), far more is known about his activities than is usual with such agents.
His first reports included vivid descriptions of violent demonstrations against the Union. "A Scots rabble is the worst of its kind", he reported. Defoe reportedly "became fearful of beinglynched after a threatening crowd surged up the High Street shouting 'No Union! No English dogs!'"[31] Years laterJohn Clerk of Penicuik, a leading Unionist, wrote in his memoirs that it was not known at the time that Defoe had been sent by Godolphin:
to give a faithful account to him from time to time how everything past here. He was therefor a spy among us, but not known to be such, otherways theMob ofEdin. had pull him to pieces.[32]
Defoe was aPresbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, and as such he was accepted as an adviser to theGeneral Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of theParliament of Scotland. He told Harley that he was "privy to all their folly" but "Perfectly unsuspected as with corresponding with anybody in England". He was then able to influence the proposals that were put to Parliament and reported,
Having had the honour to be always sent for the committee to whom these amendments were referrèd, I have had the good fortune to break their measures in two particulars via the bounty on Corn and proportion of the Excise.
For Scotland, he used different arguments, even the opposite of those which he used in England, usually ignoring the English doctrine of theSovereignty of Parliament, for example, telling the Scots that they could have complete confidence in the guarantees in the Treaty. Some of his pamphlets were purported to be written by Scots, misleading even reputable historians into quoting them as evidence of Scottish opinion of the time. The same is true of a massive history of the Union which Defoe published in 1709 and which some historians still treat as a valuable contemporary source for their own works. Defoe took pains to give his history an air of objectivity by giving some space to arguments against the Union, but always kept the last word for himself.
He disposed of the main Union opponent,Andrew Fletcher ofSaltoun, by ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of theDuke of Hamilton, the official leader of the various factions opposed to the Union, who seemingly betrayed his former colleagues when he switched to the Unionist/Government side in the decisive final stages of the debate.
In 1709, Defoe authored a lengthy book entitledThe History of the Union of Great Britain, an Edinburgh publication printed by the Heirs of Anderson.[33] Defoe is cited twice in the book as its author,[34][35] and gives details of the events leading up to theActs of Union 1707, dating as far back as 6 December 1604, when KingJames I was presented with a proposal for unification.[36] This so-called "first draft" for unification took place just a little over 100 years before the signing of the 1707 accord.
Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehemently in favour of remaining independent from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write hisTour thro' the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1726, where he admitted that the increase of trade and population in Scotland which he had predicted as a consequence of the Union was "not the case, but rather the contrary".
Glasgow Bridge as Defoe might have seen it in the 18th century
Defoe's description ofGlasgow (Glaschu) as a "Dear Green Place" has often been misquoted as aGaelic translation for the town's name. The GaelicGlas could mean grey or green, whilechu means dog or hollow.Glaschu probably means "Green Hollow". The "Dear Green Place", like much of Scotland, was a hotbed of unrest against the Union. The localTronminister urged his congregation "to up and anent for the City of God".
The "Dear Green Place" and "City of God" required government troops to put down the rioters tearing up copies of the Treaty at almost everymercat cross in Scotland. When Defoe visited in the mid-1720s, he claimed that the hostility towards his party was "because they were English and because of the Union, which they were almost universally exclaimed against".[37]
The extent and particulars are widely contested concerning Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication ofRobinson Crusoe in 1719. Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute tracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologiaAppeal to Honour and Justice (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–1714). Other works that anticipate his novelistic career includeThe Family Instructor (1715), a conduct manual on religious duty;Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717), in which he impersonatesNicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated theTreaty of Utrecht (1713); andA Continuation of theLetters Writ by a Turkish Spy (1718), a satire of European politics and religion, ostensibly written by aMuslim in Paris.
From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he is famous (see below). In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conduct manuals, includingReligious Courtship (1722),The Complete English Tradesman (1726) andThe New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such asThe Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) andEverybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725) and works on the supernatural, likeThe Political History of the Devil (1726),A System of Magick (1727) andAn Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). His works on foreign travel and trade includeA General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) andAtlas Maritimus and Commercialis (1728). Perhaps his most significant work, apart from the novels, isA Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1727), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of theIndustrial Revolution.
Published in 1726,The Complete English Tradesman is an example of Defoe's political works. In the work, Defoe discussed the role of thetradesman in England in comparison to tradesmen internationally, arguing that the British system of trade is far superior.[38] Defoe also implied that trade was the backbone of theBritish economy: "an estate's a pond, but a trade's a spring."[38] In the work, Defoe praised the practicality of trade not only within the economy but the social stratification as well. Defoe argued that most of the Britishgentry was at one time or another inextricably linked with the institution of trade, either through personal experience, marriage or genealogy.[38] Oftentimes younger members of noble families entered into trade, and marriages to a tradesman's daughter by anobleman was also common. Overall, Defoe demonstrated a high respect for tradesmen, being one himself.
Not only did Defoe elevate individual British tradesmen to the level ofgentleman, but he praised the entirety of British trade as a superior system to other systems of trade.[38] Trade, Defoe argues, is a much better catalyst for social and economic change than war. Defoe also argued that through the expansion of theBritish Empire and British mercantile influence, Britain would be able to "increase commerce at home" through job creations and increasedconsumption.[38] He wrote in the work that increased consumption, by laws of supply and demand, increases production and in turn raises wages for the poor, thereby lifting part of British society further out of poverty.[38]
A house where Defoe once lived, near London, England
Published in 1719, when Defoe was in his late fifties,[39]Robinson Crusoe relates the story of a man's shipwreck on a desert island for twenty-eight years and his subsequent adventures. Throughout its episodic narrative, Crusoe's struggles with faith are apparent as he bargains with God in times of life-threatening crises, but time and again he turns his back after his deliverances. He is finally content with his lot in life, separated from society, following a more genuine conversion experience.
In the opening pages ofThe Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author describes how Crusoe settled inBedfordshire, married and produced a family, and that when his wife died, he went off on these further adventures. Bedford is also the place where the brother of "H. F." inA Journal of the Plague Year retired to avoid the danger of the plague, so that by implication, if these works were not fiction, Defoe's family met Crusoe in Bedford, from whence the information in these books was gathered. Defoe went to school in Newington Green with a friend named Caruso.
The novel has been assumed to be based in part on the story of the Scottish castawayAlexander Selkirk, who spent four years stranded in theJuan Fernández Islands,[16] but his experience is inconsistent with the details of the narrative.[citation needed] The island Selkirk lived on, Más a Tierra (Closer to Land) was renamedRobinson Crusoe Island in 1966. It has also been suggested that Defoe was also inspired by a translation of a book by theAndalusian-Arab Muslim polymathIbn Tufail, who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition was entitledPhilosophus Autodidactus;[40][41][42][43]Simon Ockley published an English translation in 1708, entitledThe improvement of human reason, exhibited in the life of Hai ebn Yokdhan.
Defoe's next novel wasCaptain Singleton (1720), an adventure story whose first half covers a traversal of Africa which anticipated subsequent discoveries byDavid Livingstone and whose second half taps into the contemporary fascination withpiracy. The novel has been commended for its sensitive depiction of the close relationship between the hero and his religious mentor,Quaker William Walters. Its description of the geography of Africa and some of its fauna does not use the language or knowledge of a fiction writer and suggests an eyewitness experience.
A Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, can be read both as novel and as nonfiction. It is an account of theGreat Plague of London in 1665, which is undersigned by the initials "H. F.", suggesting the author's uncle Henry Foe as its primary source. It is a historical account of the events based on extensive research and written as if by an eyewitness, even though Defoe was only about five years old when it occurred.[44][45][46][47]
Colonel Jack (1722) follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty and crime to prosperity in the colonies, military and marital imbroglios, and religious conversion, driven by a problematic notion of becoming a "gentleman."
Also in 1722, Defoe wroteMoll Flanders, another first-personpicaresque novel of the fall and eventual redemption, both material and spiritual, of a lone woman in 17th-century England. The titular heroine appears as a whore, bigamist and thief, lives inThe Mint, commits adultery and incest, and yet manages to retain the reader's sympathy. Her savvy manipulation of both men and wealth earns her a life of trials but ultimately an ending in reward. Although Moll struggles with the morality of some of her actions and decisions, religion seems to be far from her concerns throughout most of her story. However, like Robinson Crusoe, she finally repents.Moll Flanders is an important work in the development of the novel, as it challenged the common perception of femininity and gender roles in 18th-century British society.[23] Although it was not intended as a work oferotica, later generations came to view it as such.[48][49]
Defoe's final novel,Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724), which narrates the moral and spiritual decline of a high society courtesan, differs from other Defoe works because the main character does not exhibit a conversion experience, even though she claims to be a penitent later in her life, at the time that she is relating her story.[50]
In Defoe's writings, especially in his fiction, are traits that can be seen across his works. Defoe was well known for hisdidacticism, with most of his works aiming to convey a message of some kind to the readers (typically a moral one, stemming from his religious background).[51] Connected to Defoe's didacticism is his use of the genre ofspiritual autobiography, particularly inRobinson Crusoe.[52] Another common feature of Defoe's fictional works is that he claimed they were true stories of their subjects.
Defoe is known to have used at least 198pen names.[53] It was a very common practice in eighteenth-century novel publishing to initially publish works under apen name, with most other authors at the time publishing their works anonymously.[54] As a result of the anonymous ways in which most of his works were published, it has been a challenge for scholars over the years to properly credit Defoe for all of the works that he wrote in his lifetime. If counting only works that Defoe published under his own name, or his known pen name "the author of the True-Born Englishman", about 75 works can be attributed to him.[55]
Beyond these 75 works, scholars have used a variety of strategies to determine what other works should be attributed to Defoe. WriterGeorge Chalmers was the first to begin the work of attributing anonymously published works to Defoe. InHistory of the Union, he created an expanded list with over a hundred titles that he attributed to Defoe, alongside twenty additional works that he designated as "Books which are supposed to be De Foe's".[56] Chalmers included works in his canon of Defoe that were particularly in line with his style and way of thinking, and ultimately attributed 174 works to Defoe.[55] Many of the attributions of Defoe's novels came long after his death. Notably,Moll Flanders andRoxana were published anonymously for over fifty years until Francis Noble named Daniel Defoe on their title pages in edition publication in 1775 and 1774.[57]
BiographerP. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens built upon this canon, also relying on what they believed could be Defoe's work, without a means to be absolutely certain.[58] In theCambridge History of English Literature, the section on Defoe by authorWilliam P. Trent attributes 370 works to Defoe. J. R. Moore generated the largest list of Defoe's work, with approximately 550 works that he attributed to Defoe.[56]
Defoe died on 24 April 1731, in Ropemakers Alley, not far from where he was born in Cripplegate, probably while in hiding from his creditors.[59] He was often in debtors' prison.[60] The cause of his death was labelled as lethargy, but he probably experienced a stroke.[2] He was interred inBunhill Fields (today Bunhill Fields Burial and Gardens), just outside the medieval boundaries of the City of London, in what is now theBorough of Islington, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1870.[61] A street in theBronx, New York, is named in his honour (De Foe Place).[62]
An Essay Upon Projects (1697) – subsections of the text include: "The History of Projects," "Of Projectors," "Of Banks," "Of the Highways," "Of Assurances," "Of Friendly Societies," "The Proposal is for a Pension Office," "Of Wagering," "Of Fools," "A Charity-Lottery," "Of Bankrupts," "Of Academies" (including a section proposing an academy for women), "Of a Court Merchant," and "Of Seamen."
The Storm (1704) – describes the worst storm ever to hit Britain in recorded times. Includes eyewitness accounts.
Atlantis Major (1711)
The Family Instructor (1715)
Memoirs of the Church of Scotland (1717)
The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard (1724) – describing Sheppard's life of crime and concluding with the miraculous escapes from prison that made him a public sensation.
A Narrative of All The Robberies, Escapes, &c. of John Sheppard (1724) – written by or taken down from Sheppard himself in the condemned cell before he was hanged for theft, apparently by way of conclusion to Defoe's work. According to the Introduction to Volume 16 of the works of Defoe published by J.M. Dent in 1895, Sheppard handed the manuscript to the publisher Applebee from the prisoners' cart as he was taken away to be hanged. Defoe's edition of the text includes corrections of factual details and an explanation of how Sheppard's escapes from prison were achieved.
^The surname Defoe is of Flemish origin, probably derived fromFaux[13] or one of its variants, such asDefauw.[14] Defoe laudedElizabeth for encouraging theFlemings.[13] It is thought that he was aware of his origins[13] and it is possible that he understood someFlemish/Dutch, since his library had Dutch titles.[15]
^"Defoe",The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 265.
^Backscheider (2008/2004). "Even the most conservative lists of Defoe's works include 318 titles, and most Defoe scholars would credit him with at least 50 more."
^Margarett A. James and Dorothy F. Tucker. "Daniel Defoe, Journalist."Business History Review 2.1 (1928): 2–6.
^abcdefghiBlack, Joseph Laurence, ed. (2006).The Broadview Anthology of Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Toronto: Broadview Press.ISBN978-1-55111-611-2.
^The Storm: or, a collection of the most remarkable casualties and disasters which happen'd in the late dreadful tempest, both by sea and land. London: 1704.
^Downie, J. A."Robert Harley and the Press"(PDF).University of Newcastle eTheses. University of Newcastle. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 25 January 2019. Retrieved24 January 2019.
^Nawal Muhammad Hassan (1980),Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A study of an early Arabic impact on English literature, Al-Rashid House for Publication.
^Cyril Glassé (2001),The New Encyclopedia of Islam, Rowman Altamira, p. 202,ISBN0-7591-0190-6.
^Haque, Amber (2004). "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists".Journal of Religion and Health.43 (4): 357–377 [369].doi:10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z.JSTOR27512819.S2CID38740431.
^Mayer, Robert (1990). "The Reception of a Journal of the Plague Year and the Nexus of Fiction and History in the Novel".ELH.57 (3):529–555.doi:10.2307/2873233.JSTOR2873233.
^Kibbie, Ann Louise (1995). "Monstrous Generation: The Birth of Capital in Defoe's Moll Flanders and Roxana".PMLA.110 (5):1023–1034.doi:10.2307/463027.JSTOR463027.S2CID163996973.
^Linker, Laura (2016).Dangerous Women, Libertine Epicures, and the Rise of Sensibility, 1670–1730 (ebook ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 118.
^Kropf, Carl Raymond (1968).Defoe as a Puritan Novelist (Thesis).ProQuest302359591.
^"The appendices offer even more: a listing of Voltaire's and Daniel Defoe's numerous pseudonyms (178 and 198, respectively) ..." inA Dictionary of Pseudonyms and Their Origins, with Stories of Name Changes, 3rd ed., Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub., 1998,ISBN0-7864-0423-X.
^Vareschi, Mark (1 April 2012). "Attribution and Repetition: The Case of Defoe and the Circulating Library".Eighteenth-Century Life.36 (2):36–59.doi:10.1215/00982601-1548027.S2CID145603239.
^abPauley, Benjamin F. (2023). "Attribution and the Defoe Canon".The Oxford Handbook of Danirel Defoe. pp. 629–644.
^abNovak, Maximillian E. (1996). "The Defoe Canon: Attribution and De-Attribution".Huntington Library Quarterly.59 (1):83–104.doi:10.2307/3817908.JSTOR3817908.
^Vareschi, Mark (2023), Rivero, Albert J.; Justice, George (eds.),"Anonymous Defoe",Daniel Defoe in Context, Literature in Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 145–152,ISBN978-1-108-83671-5, retrieved22 November 2023
^Furbank, P. N.; Owens, W. R.; Moore, John Robert (1994).Defoe de-attributions: a critique of J.R. Moore's Checklist. London ; Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press.ISBN978-1-85285-128-6.
^Baine, Rodney M. (1972). "Daniel Defoe and Captain Caneton's Memoirs of an English Officer".Texas Studies in Literature and Language.13 (4):613–627.JSTOR40755201.
^"The life and adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly call'd Mother Ross". Catalog entry: in several campaigns under King William and the late Duke of Marlborough, in the quality of a foot-soldier and dragoon, gave many signal proofs of an unparallell'd courage and personal bravery. Taken from her own mouth when a pensioner of Chelsea-Hospital, and known to be true by many who were engaged in those great scenes of action.Sir John Soane's Museum Collection Online. Retrieved16 March 2019.
Di Renzo, Anthony (October 1998). "The Complete English Tradesman: Daniel Defoe and the Emergence of Business Writing".Journal of Technical Writing and Communication.28 (4):325–334.doi:10.2190/TE72-JBN7-GNUT-BNUW.S2CID219975268.
Furbank, P. N.; Owens, W. R. (2015).A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe. Routledge.ISBN978-1-317-31567-4.
Gollapudi, Aparna (2015). "Personhood, Property Rights, and the Child in John Locke's Two Treatises of Government and Daniel Defoe's Fiction".Eighteenth-Century Fiction.28 (1):25–58.doi:10.3138/ecf.28.1.25.S2CID145261485.Project MUSE595356.
Gregg, Stephen H.Defoe's Writings and Manliness: Contrary Men (Routledge, 2016).
Guilhamet, Leon.Defoe and the Whig Novel: A Reading of the Major Fiction (U of Delaware Press, 2010).
Hammond, John R. ed.A Defoe companion (Macmillan, 1993).
Novak, Maximillian E.Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas (2001)ISBN978-0-19-812686-7
O'Brien, John (1996). "The Character of Credit: Defoe's "Lady Credit," The Fortunate Mistress, and the Resources of Inconsistency in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain".ELH.63 (3):603–631.doi:10.1353/elh.1996.0030.S2CID162892432.Project MUSE11339.
Novak, Maximillian E.Realism, myth, and history in Defoe's fiction (U of Nebraska Press, 1983).
Richetti, John.The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography (2015).
