Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer whose novel Robinson Crusoe became a landmark in the development of the English novel.

Robinson Crusoe: Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel follows a castaway who survives for years on a remote island. Defoe’s best-known work helped establish his reputation as a novelist.
Great Storm of 1703: A severe storm that struck southern Britain in November 1703, causing extensive deaths and damage. Defoe gathered eyewitness accounts of the disaster for his early book The Storm.
Alexander Selkirk: A Scottish sailor who lived alone on an uninhabited Pacific island from 1704 to 1709. His experience is often linked to Defoe’s invention of Robinson Crusoe, though the novel is not a direct biography.
English novel: A tradition of extended prose fiction written in English, encompassing diverse forms and historical periods. Defoe’s works are often treated as early landmarks in this tradition.
Moll Flanders: Daniel Defoe’s 1722 novel presents the criminal life and eventual repentance of its first-person narrator. Its resourceful heroine extends Defoe’s interest in survival and social mobility.
Tory: A member or supporter of a British political tradition that developed in the late seventeenth century. Defoe’s shifting political alliances placed him in conflict with and service to Tory governments.
Jonathan Swift: An Anglo-Irish satirist and author of Gulliver’s Travels, known for political and social criticism. Swift’s literary satire offers a sharply different model from Defoe’s documentary-seeming narratives.
Epistolary novel: A novel told through documents such as letters, diaries, or other written records. Defoe’s use of purported documents and personal testimony anticipates documentary forms of fiction.
A Journal of the Plague Year: Daniel Defoe’s 1722 work recounts the 1665 London plague through a narrator presented as an eyewitness. It shows how Defoe made historical reporting resemble personal testimony.
Whig: A member or supporter of a British political tradition that emerged during the late seventeenth century. Defoe wrote political works amid the rivalry between Whigs and Tories.

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