Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions
His Life and Works
Published on 13. February 2003
Book
Paperback/Softback
776 pages
978-0-19-926154-3 (ISBN)
Description
Daniel Defoe, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, lived during a period of dramatic historical, political, and social change in Britain, and was by any standard a superb observer of his times. Through his pamphlets, newspapers, books of travel, and works of fiction he commented on anything and everything, from birth control to the price of coal, from flying machines to academies for women, from security for the aged to the dangers of the plague. In his fiction he created a type of vivid realism that powerfully influenced the development of the novel. The publication of works such as Robinson Crusoe are major events because they shape the ways in which we see our world, so that ever afterwards thoughts of desolation and desert islands immediately evoke Defoe's masterpiece. From his 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stories, which he presented to his future wife under the sobriquet Bellmour, to his Compleat English Gentleman, left unpublished at his death, Defoe was pre-eminently a creator of fictions. This life gives us, for the first time, a full understanding of the thought and personal experience that went into Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana.
Reviews / Votes
A finely tuned portrait of an ambitious man often living against the flow of his world. * Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
8 Fotos bzw. Rasterbilder
8pp halftone plates
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 40 mm
Weight
1123 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-926154-3 (9780199261543)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Professor Maximillian E. Novak is Professor of English Literature at UCLA. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford in 1961 and his interests include Restoration and Eighteenth-Century British Literature; the Novel; Jewish-American Literature, Libertinism, Restoration Drama, the rise of the novel, primitivism, sensibility, madness, painting and the novel, the Gothic novel, Jewish-American writing of the immigrant period and after 1930
Content
List of Illustrations ; Abbreviations ; Preface ; 1. After the Revolution ; 2. The education of a Dissenter ; 3. Meditation of matters spiritual and secular ; 4. Marriage and rebellion ; 5. Financial woes and recovery ; 6. Propagandist for William III ; 7. The True-Born Englishman and other satires ; 8. An age of plot and deceit ; 9. From pilloried libeller to Government propagandist ; 10. 'Writing history sheet by sheet': Defoe, The Review ; 11. From public journalist to lunar philosopher ; 12. Defoe as spy and Whig propagandist ; 13. A 'true spy' in Scotland ; 14. In limbo between causes and masters ; 15. Journalism and history in 'an age of mysteries and paradoxes' ; 16. How to sell out while keeping one's integrity (somewhat) intact in that 'Lunatick Age' ; 17. These dangerous times ; 18. 'A miserable divided nation' ; 19. A change of monarchs ; 20. Times when honest men must reserve themselves for better fortunes ; 21. Corrector general of the press ; 22. The year before Robinson Crusoe: intellectual controversies and experiments in fiction ; 23. Robinson Crusoe and the variability of life ; 24. After Crusoe: pirate adventures, military memoirs, and the South Sea scandal ; 25. Creating fictional worlds ; 26. Describing Britain in the 1720s ; 27. Enter Henry Baker ; 28. Last productive years ; 29. Sinking under the weight of affliction ; Works cited ; Index