Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions His Life and Ideas

by Novak, Maximillian E.

• ISBN13: 9780199261543
• ISBN10: 0199261547
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Daniel Defoe led an exciting and indeed precarious life. A provocative pamphleteer and journalist, a spy and double agent, a revolutionary and a dreamer, he was variously hunted by mobs with murderous intent and treated as a celebrity by the most powerful leaders of the country. Imprisoned many times, pilloried and reviled by his enemies, through it all he managed to produce some of the most significant literature of the eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions is the first biography to view Defoe's complex life through the angle of vision that is most important to us as modern readers--his career as a writer. Maximillian Novak, a leading authority on Defoe, ranges from the writer's earliest collection of brief stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour, to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death. Novak illuminates such works as Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, novels that changed the course of fiction in their time and have remained towering classics to this day. And he reveals a writer who was a superb observer of his times--an age of dramatic historical, political, and social change. Indeed, through his many pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction, Defoe commented on everything from birth control to the price of coal, and from flying machines to the dangers of the plague. Beautifully and authoritatively written, this is the first serious, full-scale biography of Defoe to appear in a decade. It gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that lie behind some of the great works of English literature.

Author Biography

Maximillian E. Novak is Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was written numerous books and essays on Defoe's writing and thought. He lives in Hollywood, California.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Abbreviations	x
Introduction	1	(10)
After the Revolution	11	(21)
The Education of a Dissenter	32	(19)
Meditating on Matters Spiritual and Secular	51	(22)
Marriage and Rebellion	73	(28)
Financial Woes and Recovery	101	(19)
Propagandist for William III	120	(22)
The True-Born Englishman and Other Satires	142	(26)
An Age of Plot and Deceit, of Contradiction and Paradox	168	(21)
From Pilloried Libeller to Government Propagandist	189	(24)
`Writing History Sheet by Sheet': Defoe, The Review, and The Storm	213	(24)
From Public Journalist to Lunar Philosopher	237	(25)
Defoe as Spy and Whig Propagandist	262	(27)
A `True Spy' in Scotland	289	(24)
In Limbo Between Causes and Masters	313	(25)
Journalism and History in `An Age of Mysteries and Paradoxes'	338	(22)
How to Sell Out While Keeping One's Integrity (Somewhat) Intact in That `Lunatick Age'	360	(26)
These Dangerous Times: Or Wild Doings in This World	386	(25)
`A Miserable Divided Nation'	411	(25)
A Change of Monarchs and the Whig's Revenge	436	(28)
Times When Honest Men Must Reserve Themselves for Better Fortunes	464	(26)
Corrector General of the Press: A Digression on Defoe as a Journalist	490	(23)
The Year before Robinson Crusoe: Intellectual Controversies and Experiments in Fiction	513	(22)
Robinson Crusoe and the Variability of Life	535	(30)
After Crusoe: Pirate Adventures, Military Memoirs and the South Sea Scandal	565	(28)
Creating Fictional Worlds	593	(31)
Describing Britain in the 1720s	624	(24)
Enter Henry Baker	648	(26)
Last Productive Years	674	(21)
Sinking Under the Weight of Affliction	695	(12)
Works Cited	707	(34)
Index	741