The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

- By Daniel Defoe
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17/18th-century English trader, writer and journalist Daniel DefoeBornDaniel Foec. 1660London, EnglandDied24 April 1731London, EnglandResting placeBunhill FieldsOccupationJournalist, merchant, pamphleteer, spyGenreAdventureSpouseMary Tuffley Daniel Defoe (/dɪˈfoʊ/; born Daniel Foe; c. 1660 – 24 April 1731)[1] was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson 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 the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel 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 of business journalism[5] and economic journalism.[6] Early life[edit] Plaque honouring Daniel Defoe Daniel Foe (his original name) was probably born in Fore Street in the parish of St Giles Cripplegate, London.[7] Defoe later added the aristocratic-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 prosperous tallow chandler of probable Flemish descent,[11][12][a] and a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. In Defoe's early childhood, he lived through several significant historical events: in 1665, seventy thousand were killed by the Great Plague of London, and the next year, the Great Fire of London left only Defoe's and two other houses standing in his neighbourhood.[16] In 1667, when he was probably about seven, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and attacked the town of Chatham in the raid on the Medway. His mother, Alice, had died by the time he was about ten.[17][18] Education[edit] Defoe was educated at the Rev. James Fisher's boarding school in Pixham Lane in Dorking, Surrey.[19] His parents were Presbyterian dissenters, and around the age of 14, he was sent to Charles Morton's dissenting academy at Newington Green, then a village just north of London, where he is believed to have attended the Dissenting 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 established Church of England. Business career[edit] 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 as civets to make perfume), though he was rarely out of debt. On 1 January 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley at St Botolph's Aldgate.[23] She was the daughter of a London merchant, and brought with her a dowry 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.[17] In 1685, Defoe joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion but gained a pardon, by which he escaped the Bloody Assizes of Judge George Jeffreys. Queen Mary and her husband William III were jointly crowned in 1689, and Defoe became one of William's close allies and a secret agent.[17] Some of the new policies led to conflict with France, thus damaging prosperous trade relationships for Defoe.[17] 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 from debtors' prison, he probably travelled in Europe and Scotland,[24] and it may have been at this time that he traded wine to Cadiz, Porto and Lisbon. 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 now Tilbury in Essex and lived in the parish of Chadwell St Mary nearby. Writing[edit] As many as 545 titles have been attributed to Defoe, including satirical poems, political and religious pamphlets, and volumes. Pamphleteering and prison[edit] Daniel Defoe in the pillory, 1862 line engraving by James Charles Armytage after Eyre Crowe Defoe's first notable publication was An Essay Upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698, he defended the right of King William III to a standing army during disarmament, after the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years' War (1688–1697). His most successful poem, The True-Born Englishman (1701), defended William against xenophobic attacks from his political enemies in England, and English anti-immigration sentiments more generally. In 1701, Defoe presented the Legion's Memorial to Robert Harley, then Speaker 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 of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval, as the king was replaced by Queen Anne who immediately began her offensive against Nonconformists.[17] Defoe was a natural target, and his pamphleteering and political activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703, principally on account of his December 1702 pamphlet entitled The 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 the high church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called "occasional conformity", such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney. It was published anonymously, but the true authorship was quickly discovered and Defoe was arrested.[17] He was charged with seditious libel and found guilty in a trial at the Old Bailey in front of the notoriously sadistic judge Salathiel Lovell.[6] Lovell sentenced him to a punitive fine of 200 marks (£336 then, £60,544 in 2024[26]), to public humiliation in a pillory, and to an indeterminate length of imprisonment which would only end upon the discharge of the punitive fine.[6] According to legend, the publication of his poem Hymn 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?], although John 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".[18] "Wherever God erects a house of prayerthe Devil always builds a chapel there;And 't will be found, upon examination,the latter has the largest congregation." – Defoe's The True-Born Englishman, 1701 After his three days in the pillory, Defoe went into Newgate 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.[17] Within a week of his release from prison, Defoe witnessed the Great Storm of 1703, which raged through the night of 26/27 November. It caused severe damage to London and Bristol, uprooted millions of trees, and killed more than 8,000 people, mostly at sea. The event became the subject of Defoe's The 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 his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France, which supported the Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714). The Review 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 the William Gregg affair. When Harley was ousted from the ministry in 1708, Defoe continued writing the Review to support Godolphin, then again to support Harley and the Tories in the Tory ministry of 1710–1714. The Tories fell from power with the death of Queen Anne, but Defoe continued doing intelligence work for the Whig government, writing "Tory" pamphlets that undermined the Tory point of view.[17] Not all of Defoe's pamphlet writing was political. One pamphlet was originally published anonymously, entitled A 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 of Charles Drelincourt's The 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. Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707[edit] This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Daniel Defoe" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) 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 to William Paterson, the London Scot and founder of the Bank of England and part instigator of the Darien scheme, who was in the confidence of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, leading minister and spymaster in the English government. Harley accepted Defoe's services and released him in 1703. He immediately published The Review, which appeared weekly, then three times a week, written mostly by himself. This was the main mouthpiece of the English Government promoting the Act of Union 1707.[29] Defoe began his campaign in The 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 to Edinburgh as a secret agent to do everything possible to help secure acquiescence in the Treaty of Union. He was conscious of the risk to himself. Thanks to books such as The 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. Years later John 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 the Mob of Edin. had pull him to pieces.[30] Defoe was a Presbyterian who had suffered in England for his convictions, and as such he was accepted as an adviser to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and committees of the Parliament 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 andproportion 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 the Sovereignty 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 having the last word for himself. He disposed of the main Union opponent, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, by ignoring him. Nor does he account for the deviousness of the Duke 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. Aftermath[edit] In 1709, Defoe authored a rather lengthy book entitled The History of the Union of Great Britain, an Edinburgh publication printed by the Heirs of Anderson.[31] The book cites Defoe twice as being its author,[32][33] and gives details leading up to the Acts of Union 1707 by means of presenting information that dates all the way back to 6 December 1604 when King James I was presented with a proposal for unification.[34] And so, such a so-called "first draft" for unification took place just a little over 100 years before the signing of the 1707 accord, which, respectively, preceded the commencement of Robinson Crusoe by another ten years. Defoe made no attempt to explain why the same Parliament of Scotland which was so vehement for its independence from 1703 to 1705 became so supine in 1706. He received very little reward from his paymasters and of course no recognition for his services by the government. He made use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour 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 of Glasgow (Glaschu) as a "Dear Green Place" has often been misquoted as a Gaelic translation for the town's name. The Gaelic Glas could mean grey or green, while chu 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 local Tron minister 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 every mercat 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".[35] Late writing[edit] The extent and particulars are widely contested concerning Defoe's writing in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication of Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Defoe comments on the tendency to attribute tracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologia Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–1714). Other works that anticipate his novelistic career include The Family Instructor (1715), a conduct manual on religious duty; Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717), in which he impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht (1713); and A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (1718), a satire of European politics and religion, ostensibly written by a Muslim in Paris. Memorial to "Daniel De-Foe", Bunhill Fields, City Road, Borough of Islington, London 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, including Religious Courtship (1722), The Complete English Tradesman (1726) and The New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of books decrying the breakdown of the social order, such as The Great Law of Subordination Considered (1724) and Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business (1725) and works on the supernatural, like The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magick (1727) and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). His works on foreign travel and trade include A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) and Atlas Maritimus and Commercialis (1728). Perhaps his most significant work, apart from the novels, is A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1727), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. The Complete English Tradesman[edit] Published in 1726, The Complete English Tradesman is an example of Defoe's political works. In the work, Defoe discussed the role of the tradesman in England in comparison to tradesmen internationally, arguing that the British system of trade is far superior.[36] Defoe also implied that trade was the backbone of the British economy: "estate's a pond, but trade's a spring."[36] 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 British gentry was at one time or another inextricably linked with the institution of trade, either through personal experience, marriage or genealogy.[36] Oftentimes younger members of noble families entered into trade, and marriages to a tradesman's daughter by a nobleman 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 of gentleman, but he praised the entirety of British trade as a superior system to other systems of trade.[36] Trade, Defoe argues, is a much better catalyst for social and economic change than war. Defoe also argued that through the expansion of the British Empire and British mercantile influence, Britain would be able to "increase commerce at home" through job creations and increased consumption.[36] He wrote in the work that increased consumption, by laws of supply and demand, increases production and in turn raises wages for the poor therefore lifting part of British society further out of poverty.[36] Novels[edit] Robinson Crusoe[edit] A house where Defoe once lived, near London, England Published when Defoe was in his late fifties,[37] 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 of The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, the author describes how Crusoe settled in Bedfordshire, 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." in A 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 Newington Green with a friend named Caruso. The novel has been assumed to be based in part on the story of the Scottish castaway Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years stranded in the Juan Fernández Islands,[17] but his experience is inconsistent with the details of the narrative. The island Selkirk lived on, Más a Tierra (Closer to Land) was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. It has been supposed that Defoe may have also been inspired by a translation of a book by the Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition was entitled Philosophus Autodidactus;[38][39][40][41] Simon Ockley published an English translation in 1708, entitled The improvement of human reason, exhibited in the life of Hai ebn Yokdhan. Captain Singleton[edit] Defoe's next novel was Captain Singleton (1720), an adventure story whose first half covers a traversal of Africa which anticipated subsequent discoveries by David Livingstone and whose second half taps into the contemporary fascination with piracy. 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. Memoirs of a Cavalier[edit] Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) is set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War. A Journal of the Plague Year[edit] A Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, can be read both as novel and as nonfiction. It is an account of the Great 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.[42][43][44][45] Colonel Jack[edit] 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." Moll Flanders[edit] Also in 1722, Defoe wrote Moll Flanders, another first-person picaresque 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 in The 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 of erotica, later generations came to view it as such.[46][47] Roxana[edit] 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.[48] Patterns[edit] In Defoe's writings, especially in his fiction, are traits that can be seen across his works. Defoe was well known for his didacticism, 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).[49] Connected to Defoe's didacticism is his use of the genre of spiritual autobiography, particularly in Robinson Crusoe.[50] Another common feature of Defoe's fictional works is that he claimed them to be the true stories of their subjects. Attribution and de-attribution[edit] Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names.[51] It was a very common practice in eighteenth-century novel publishing to initially publish works under a pen name, with most other authors at the time publishing their works anonymously.[52] 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," there would be about 75 works that could be attributed to him.[53] Beyond these 75 works, scholars have used a variety of strategies to determine what other works should be attributed to Defoe. Writer George Chalmers was the first to begin the work of attributing anonymously published works to Defoe. In History 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."[54] 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.[53] Many of the attributions of Defoe's novels came long after his death. Notably, Moll Flanders and Roxana were published anonymously for over fifty years until Francis Noble named Daniel Defoe on their title pages in edition publication in 1775 and 1774.[55] Biographer P. 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.[56] In the Cambridge History of English Literature, the section on Defoe by author William P. Trent attributes 370 works to Defoe. J.R. Moore generated the largest list of Defoe's work, with approximately five hundred and fifty works that he attributed to Defoe.[54] Death[edit] Bunhill Fields monument detail Defoe died on 24 April 1731, probably while in hiding from his creditors. He was often in debtors' prison.[57] The cause of his death was labelled as lethargy, but he probably experienced a stroke.[2] He was interred in Bunhill Fields (today Bunhill Fields Burial and Gardens), just outside the medieval boundaries of the City of London, in what is now the Borough of Islington, where a monument was erected to his memory in 1870.[58] A street in the Bronx, New York is named in his honour (De Foe Place).[59] Selected works[edit] Novels[edit] The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon: Translated from the Lunar Language (1705)[60] Robinson Crusoe (1719) – originally published in two volumes:[60] The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years [...] The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: Being the Second and Last Part of His Life [...] Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World (1720) Captain Singleton (1720) Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) Colonel Jack (1722) Moll Flanders (1722) Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts (1726) Nonfiction[edit] 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 for which he had become a public sensation. A Narrative of All The Robberies, Escapes, &c. of John Sheppard (1724) – written by or taken from Sheppard himself in the condemned cell before he was hanged for theft, apparently by way of conclusion to the Defoe 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. It included a correction of a factual detail and an explanation of how his escapes from prison were achieved. A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (1724–1727) A New Voyage Round the World (1724) The Political History of the Devil (1726) The Complete English Tradesman (1726) A treatise concerning the use and abuse of the marriage bed... (1727) A Plan of the English Commerce (1728) – describes how the English woolen textile industrial base was developed by protectionist policies by Tudor monarchs, especially by Henry VII of England and Elizabeth I, including such policies as high tariffs on the importation of finished woolen goods, high taxes on raw wool leaving England, bringing in artisans skilled in wool textile manufacturing from the Low Countries, selective government-granted monopoly rights, and government-sponsored industrial espionage. Pamphlets or essays in prose[edit] The Poor Man's Plea (1698) The History of the Kentish Petition (1701) The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) The Great Law of Subordination Consider'd (1704) Giving Alms No Charity, and Employing the Poor (1704) The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706) An Appeal to Honour and Justice, Tho' it be of his Worst Enemies, by Daniel Defoe, Being a True Account of His Conduct in Publick Affairs (1715) A Vindication of the Press: Or, An Essay on the Usefulness of Writing, on Criticism, and the Qualification of Authors (1718) Every-body's Business, Is No-body's Business (1725) The Protestant Monastery (1726) Parochial Tyranny (1727) Augusta Triumphans (1728) Second Thoughts are Best (1729) An Essay Upon Literature (1726) Mere Nature Delineated (1726) Conjugal Lewdness (1727) – Anti-Contraception Essay Pamphlets or essays in verse[edit] The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr (1701) Hymn to the Pillory (1703) An Essay on the Late Storm (1704) Some contested works attributed to Defoe[edit] A Friendly Epistle by way of reproof from one of the people called Quakers, to T. B., a dealer in many words (1715). The King of Pirates (1719) – purporting to be an account of the pirate Henry Avery. The Pirate Gow (1725) – an account of John Gow. A General History of the Pyrates (1724, 1725, 1726, 1828) – published in two volumes by Charles Rivington, who had a shop near St. Paul's Cathedral, London. Published under the name of Captain Charles Johnson, it sold in many editions. Captain Carleton's Memoirs of an English Officer (1728).[61] The life and adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly call'd Mother Ross (1740) – published anonymously; printed and sold by R. Montagu in London; and attributed to Defoe but more recently not accepted by Moore.[62] See also[edit] Apprentice complex Moubray House Robert Drury (sailor) – whose book has been suggested by some was written by Defoe Notes[edit] ^ The surname Defoe is of Flemish origin, probably derived from Faux[13] or one of its variants, such as Defauw.[14] Defoe lauded Elizabeth for encouraging the Flemings.[13] It is thought that he was aware of his origins[13] and it is possible that he understood some Flemish/Dutch, since his library had Dutch titles.[15] References[edit] ^ Duguid, Paul (2 October 2006). "Limits of self-organization: Peer production and "laws of quality"". First Monday. 11 (10). doi:10.5210/fm.v11i10.1405. ISSN 1396-0466. Retrieved 17 November 2022. Most reliable sources hold that the date of Defoe's birth was uncertain and may have fallen in 1659 or 1661. The day of his death is also uncertain. ^ a b c Backscheider, Paula R. (January 2008) [2004]. "Daniel Defoe (1660?–1731)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7421. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) ^ "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. ^ a b c Adams, Gavin John (2012). Letters to John Law. Newton Page. pp. liii–lv. ISBN 978-1-934619-08-7. Archived from the original on 2 January 2014. ^ Hibbert, Christopher; Weinreb, Ben; Keay, John; Keay, Julia (2010). The London Encyclopaedia. London: Pan Macmillan. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-230-73878-2. ^ Stephanson, Raymond (2013). Raymond Stephanson, Darren N. Wagner (ed.). The Secrets of Generation Reproduction in the Long Eighteenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-1-4426-6693-1. ^ Torselli, Stefano. "Daniel Defoe". www.baroque.it. Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 17 October 2021. ^ Bastian, F. (1981). Defoe's Early Years. London: Macmillan Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-333-27432-3. Retrieved 23 October 2017. ^ Schaff, Barbara (2020). Handbook of British Travel Writing. Berlin: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-049705-2. ^ Mutter, Reginald P.C. "Daniel Defoe – English author". Britannica. Archived from the original on 17 October 2021. Retrieved 17 October 2021. ^ a b c Wright, Thomas (1894). The Life of Daniel Defoe Volume 1. Cassell. p. 2. ^ Stevelinck, Ernest; De Roover, Raymond (1970). De comptabiliteit door de eeuwen heen tentoonstelling in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I. Brussels: Royal Library of Belgium. p. 150. ^ van Ginneken, Jaap (2007). Screening Difference How Hollywood's Blockbuster Films Imagine Race, Ethnicity, and Culture. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-4616-4329-6. ^ Richard West (1998) Daniel Defoe: The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures. New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 978-0-7867-0557-3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Black, Joseph Laurence, ed. (2006). The Broadview Anthology of Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. Toronto: Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55111-611-2. ^ a b Richetti, John (2005). The Life of Daniel Defoe. doi:10.1002/9780470754665. ISBN 978-0-631-19529-0.[page needed] ^ Bastian, F. (1965). "Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year Reconsidered". The Review of English Studies. 16 (62): 151–173. JSTOR 513101. ^ Biography of Daniel Defoe (1659?–1731). Retrieved 1 August 2013. ^ "Defoe in Stoke Newington". Arthur Secord, P.M.L.A. Vol. 66, p. 211, 1951. Cited in Thorncroft, p. 9, who identifies him as "an American scholar". ^ London County Council (6 October 2020). "Daniel Defoe – Blue Plaques". English Heritage. Retrieved 13 October 2020. ^ a b Novak, Maximillian (2001). Daniel Defoe : master of fictions : his life and ideas. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926154-3. OCLC 51963527. ^ Backscheider, Paula (1989). Daniel Defoe : his life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-4512-3. OCLC 59911734. ^ Defoe, Daniel (1702). "The shortest way with the Dissenters". Retrieved 18 September 2010. ^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022. ^ 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. ^ John J. Miller (13 August 2011) "Writing Up a Storm", The Wall Street Journal. ^ Downie, J. A. "Robert Harley and the Press" (PDF). University of Newcastle eTheses. University of Newcastle. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 January 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2019. ^ Clerk, John (1892). Gray, John Miller (ed.). Memoirs of the life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, baronet, baron of the Exchequer, extracted by himself from his own journals, 1676–1755. Edinburgh: Scottish Historical Society. pp. 63–64. In a side-note at this point Clerk recommends Defoe's History of the Union of Great Britain : "This History of the Union deserves to be read. It was published in folio. There is not one fact in it which I can challenge" ^ The History Of The Union Of Great Britain, 1709; Edinburgh, Heirs of Anderson at TrueScans. ^ First Defoe book author reference – cited as DANIEL DEFOE at truescans.com. ^ Second Defoe book author reference – cited as D. DE FOE at truescans.com. ^ Book reference to 6th December of 1604 at truescans.com. ^ Swenson, Rivka (2015). Essential Scots and the Idea of Unionism in Anglo-Scottish Literature, 1603–1832 (ebook ed.). Bucknell University Press. p. 58. ^ a b c d e f [Defoe, Daniel. The complete English tradesman. London: Tegg, 1841. Print.] ^ Minto, William (1879). Daniel Defoe. New York: Harper & Bros. OCLC 562533988. ^ 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, ISBN 0-7591-0190-6. ^ 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. JSTOR 27512819. S2CID 38740431. ^ Martin Wainwright (22 March 2003) Desert island scripts, The Guardian. ^ Zimmerman, Everett (1972). "H. F.'s Meditations: A Journal of the Plague Year". PMLA. 87 (3): 417–423. doi:10.2307/460900. JSTOR 460900. S2CID 164093586. ^ 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. JSTOR 2873233. ^ Seager, Nicholas (2008). "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Epistemology and Fiction in Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year"". Modern Language Review. 103 (3): 639–653. doi:10.1353/mlr.2008.0112. JSTOR 20467902. S2CID 246643865. Gale A181463661 Project MUSE 824837. ^ Nicholson, Watson, The Historical Sources of Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, Boston: The Stratford Co., 1919. ^ "Moll: The Life and Times of Moll Flanders". History Extra. Archived from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2018. ^ 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. JSTOR 463027. S2CID 163996973. ^ 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). ProQuest 302359591. ^ Starr, G. A. (1971) [1965]. Defoe & spiritual autobiography. New York: Gordian Press. ISBN 0-87752-138-7. OCLC 219753.[page needed] ^ "The appendices offer even more: a listing of Voltaire's and Daniel Defoe's numerous pseudonyms (178 and 198, respectively) ..." in A Dictionary of Pseudonyms and Their Origins, with Stories of Name Changes, 3rd ed., Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub., 1998, ISBN 0-7864-0423-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. S2CID 145603239. ^ a b Pauley, Benjamin F. (2023). "Attribution and the Defoe Canon". The Oxford Handbook of Danirel Defoe. pp. 629–44. ^ a b Novak, Maximillian E. (1996). "The Defoe Canon: Attribution and De-Attribution". Huntington Library Quarterly. 59 (1): 83–104. doi:10.2307/3817908. JSTOR 3817908. ^ 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, ISBN 978-1-108-83671-5, retrieved 22 November 2023 ^ P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens, Defoe De-Attributions: A Critique of J.R. Moore's Checklist, London: Hambledon Press, 1994. ^ Rogers, Pat (1971). "Defoe in the Fleet Prison". The Review of English Studies. 22 (88): 451–455. doi:10.1093/res/XXII.88.451. JSTOR 513276. ^ Kennedy, Maev (22 February 2011). "Burial ground of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake earns protected status". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 January 2015. ^ McNamara, John (1991). History in Asphalt. Harrison, NY: Harbor Hill Books. p. 65. ISBN 0-941980-15-4. ^ a b "Defoe, Daniel". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Online edition (3rd ed., 2011). Biographical entry by editors John Clute and Peter Nicholls. Retrieved 12 September 2019. ^ 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. JSTOR 40755201. ^ "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. Retrieved 16 March 2019. Further reading[edit] Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life (1989). Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: Ambition and Innovation (UP of Kentucky, 2015). Baines, Paul. Daniel Defoe-Robinson Crusoe/Moll Flanders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 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. S2CID 219975268. Fitzgerald, Brian (1954). Daniel Defoe: A Study in Conflict. London: Secker & Warburg. OCLC 681522101 – via Internet Archive. Furbank, P. N.; Owens, W. R. (2015). A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-31567-4. 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. S2CID 145261485. Project MUSE 595356. 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). Marshall, Ashley (2012). "Fabricating Defoes: From Anonymous Hack to Master of Fictions". Eighteenth-Century Life. 36 (2): 1–35. doi:10.1215/00982601-1548018. S2CID 144469998. Project MUSE 472272. Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas (2001) ISBN 978-0-19-812686-7 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. S2CID 162892432. Project MUSE 11339. 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). Rogers, Pat (1971). "Defoe in the Fleet Prison". The Review of English Studies. 22 (88): 451–455. doi:10.1093/res/XXII.88.451. JSTOR 513276. Sutherland, J.R. Defoe (Taylor & Francis, 1950) Primary sources[edit] Curtis, Laura Ann, ed. The Versatile Defoe: An Anthology of Uncollected Writings by Daniel Defoe (Rowman and Littlefield, 1979). Defoe, Daniel. The Best of Defoe's Review: An Anthology (Columbia University Press, 1951). W. R. Owens, and Philip Nicholas Furbank, eds. The True-Born Englishman and Other Writings (Penguin Books, 1997). W. R. Owens, and Philip Nicholas Furbank, eds. Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe (Pickering & Chatto, 2000). W. R. Owens, and Philip Nicholas Furbank, eds. Writings on Travel, Discovery, and History (Pickering & Chatto, 2001–2002). External links[edit] Wikisource has original works by or about:Daniel Defoe Wikiquote has quotations related to Daniel Defoe. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Daniel Defoe. Works by Daniel Defoe in eBook form at Standard Ebooks Works by Daniel Defoe at Project Gutenberg Works by Daniel DeFoe at Faded Page (Canada) Works by or about Daniel Defoe at Internet Archive Works by Daniel Defoe at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) Full online versions of various copies of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and the Robinsonades Full texts in German and English – eLibrary Projekt (eLib) The Journeys of Daniel Defoe around Britain (from a Vision of Britain) Saintsbury, George (1878). "Daniel Defoe" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. VII (9th ed.). pp. 26–31. "Defoe, Daniel" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 927–931. Russian toponyms in Daniel Defoe's novels Defoe, Daniel 1661?–1731 WorldCat Identity A System of Magick The Thief-Taker Hangings: How Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Wild, and Jack Sheppard Captivated London and Created the Celebrity Criminal by Aaron Skirboll vteWorks by Daniel DefoeNovels Robinson Crusoe (1719) The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) Captain Singleton (1720) Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) Moll Flanders (1722) Colonel Jack (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724) Other fiction The Consolidator or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705) The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706) Atlantis Major (1711) The King of Pirates (1719) The Pirate Gow, an account of John Gow Non-fiction An Essay Upon Projects The Storm (1704) The Family Instructor (1715) Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720) A General History of the Pyrates (1724, disputed) A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724-27) The Complete English Tradesman The Political History of the Devil (1726) Mere Nature Delineated (1726) Conjugal Lewdness (1727) A Plan of the English Commerce (1728) Essays The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) Castration of Popish Ecclesiastics (1720, attributed) An Essay Upon Literature (1726) Conjugal Lewdness (1727) Augusta Triumphans (1728) Second Thoughts Are Best (1729) Poems The True-Born Englishman (1701) Hymn to the Pillory (1703) vteDaniel Defoe's Robinson CrusoeCharacters Friday Sequel novels The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe Films Robinson Crusoe (1902) The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1922) Robinson Crusoe (1927) Robinson Crusoe (1947) Robinson Crusoe (1954) Robinson Crusoe (1974) Crusoe (1988) Robinson Crusoe (1997) Film variations Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932) Miss Robin Crusoe (1954) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. (1966) Robby (1968) Man Friday (1975) Mr. Robinson (1976) Shipwrecked (1990) The Wild Life (2016) Television The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1964) Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a Sailor from York (1982) Robinson Sucroe (1994) Crusoe (2008) Literature Friday, or, The Other Island Canadian Crusoes Foe Other Alexander Selkirk Robinson Crusoe Island Robinsonade Robinson Crusoé Robinson Crusoe economy Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw Authority control databases International FAST ISNI VIAF 2 National Norway Chile Spain France BnF data Argentina Catalonia Germany Italy Israel Finland Belgium United States 2 Sweden Latvia Japan Czech Republic Australia Greece 2 Korea Croatia Netherlands Poland 2 Portugal Vatican Academics CiNii Artists MusicBrainz People Deutsche Biographie Trove Other RISM SNAC IdRef
CHAPTER I-START IN LIFE
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called-nay we call ourselves and write our name-Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.
I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.
Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.
My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father's house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing-viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly.
After this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which nature, and the station of life I was born in, seemed to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had just been recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it; and that he should have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away; and to close all, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.
I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself-I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed: and that when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more to me.
I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed, who could be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to my father's desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father's further importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as the first heat of my resolution prompted; but I took my mother at a time when I thought her a little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I did I should never serve out my time, but I should certainly run away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad, if I came home again, and did not like it, I would go no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to recover the time that I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it."
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time; but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to London in his father's ship, and prompting me to go with them with the common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God's blessing or my father's, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer's misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father's house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father's tears and my mother's entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and my father.
All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.
These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm lasted, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was abated, and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it; however, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little sea-sick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.
I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick, but very cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so little a time after. And now, lest my good resolutions should continue, my companion, who had enticed me away, comes to me; "Well, Bob," says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, "how do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wer'n't you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind?" "A capful d'you call it?" said I; "'twas a terrible storm." "A storm, you fool you," replies he; "do you call that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you're but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we'll forget all that; d'ye see what charming weather 'tis now?" To make short this sad part of my story, we went the way of all sailors; the punch was made and I was made half drunk with it: and in that one night's wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, all my resolutions for the future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits-for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse; for if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy of.
The sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth Roads; the wind having been contrary and the weather calm, we had made but little way since the storm. Here we were obliged to come to an anchor, and here we lay, the wind continuing contrary-viz. at south-west-for seven or eight days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle came into the same Roads, as the common harbour where the ships might wait for a wind for the river.
We had not, however, rid here so long but we should have tided it up the river, but that the wind blew too fresh, and after we had lain four or five days, blew very hard. However, the Roads being reckoned as good as a harbour, the anchorage good, and our ground-tackle very strong, our men were unconcerned, and not in the least apprehensive of danger, but spent the time in rest and mirth, after the manner of the sea; but the eighth day, in the morning, the wind increased, and we had all hands at work to strike our topmasts, and make everything snug and close, that the ship might ride as easy as possible. By noon the sea went very high indeed, and our ship rode forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought once or twice our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the sheet-anchor, so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables veered out to the bitter end.
By this time it blew a terrible storm indeed; and now I began to see terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The master, though vigilant in the business of preserving the ship, yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to himself say, several times, "Lord be merciful to us! we shall be all lost! we shall be all undone!" and the like. During these first hurries I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the steerage, and cannot describe my temper: I could ill resume the first penitence which I had so apparently trampled upon and hardened myself against: I thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be nothing like the first; but when the master himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all lost, I was dreadfully frighted. I got up out of my cabin and looked out; but such a dismal sight I never saw: the sea ran mountains high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes; when I could look about, I could see nothing but distress round us; two ships that rode near us, we found, had cut their masts by the board, being deep laden; and our men cried out that a ship which rode about a mile ahead of us was foundered. Two more ships, being driven from their anchors, were run out of the Roads to sea, at all adventures, and that with not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much labouring in the sea; but two or three of them drove, and came close by us, running away with only their spritsail out before the wind.
Towards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship to let them cut away the fore-mast, which he was very unwilling to do; but the boatswain protesting to him that if he did not the ship would founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the fore-mast, the main-mast stood so loose, and shook the ship so much, they were obliged to cut that away also, and make a clear deck.
Any one may judge what a condition I must be in at all this, who was but a young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but a little. But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon account of my former convictions, and the having returned from them to the resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at death itself; and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me into such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was not come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen themselves acknowledged they had never seen a worse. We had a good ship, but she was deep laden, and wallowed in the sea, so that the seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It was my advantage in one respect, that I did not know what they meant by founder till I inquired. However, the storm was so violent that I saw, what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the night, and under all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that had been down to see cried out we had sprung a leak; another said there was four feet water in the hold. Then all hands were called to the pump. At that word, my heart, as I thought, died within me: and I fell backwards upon the side of my bed where I sat, into the cabin. However, the men roused me, and told me that I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to pump as another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump, and worked very heartily. While this was doing the master, seeing some light colliers, who, not able to ride out the storm were obliged to slip and run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a signal of distress. I, who knew nothing what they meant, thought the ship had broken, or some dreadful thing happened. In a word, I was so surprised that I fell down in a swoon. As this was a time when everybody had his own life to think of, nobody minded me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had been dead; and it was a great while before I came to myself.
We worked on; but the water increasing in the hold, it was apparent that the ship would founder; and though the storm began to abate a little, yet it was not possible she could swim till we might run into any port; so the master continued firing guns for help; and a light ship, who had rid it out just ahead of us, ventured a boat out to help us. It was with the utmost hazard the boat came near us; but it was impossible for us to get on board, or for the boat to lie near the ship's side, till at last the men rowing very heartily, and venturing their lives to save ours, our men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it, and then veered it out a great length, which they, after much labour and hazard, took hold of, and we hauled them close under our stern, and got all into their boat. It was to no purpose for them or us, after we were in the boat, to think of reaching their own ship; so all agreed to let her drive, and only to pull her in towards shore as much as we could; and our master promised them, that if the boat was staved upon shore, he would make it good to their master: so partly rowing and partly driving, our boat went away to the northward, sloping towards the shore almost as far as Winterton Ness.
We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship till we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from the moment that they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in, my heart was, as it were, dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of mind, and the thoughts of what was yet before me.
While we were in this condition-the men yet labouring at the oar to bring the boat near the shore-we could see (when, our boat mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore) a great many people running along the strand to assist us when we should come near; but we made but slow way towards the shore; nor were we able to reach the shore till, being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in, and though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull as we thought fit.
Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour's parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurances that I was not drowned.
But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery, which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and persuasions of my most retired thoughts, and against two such visible instructions as I had met with in my first attempt.
My comrade, who had helped to harden me before, and who was the master's son, was now less forward than I. The first time he spoke to me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say, the first time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered; and, looking very melancholy, and shaking his head, he asked me how I did, and telling his father who I was, and how I had come this voyage only for a trial, in order to go further abroad, his father, turning to me with a very grave and concerned tone "Young man," says he, "you ought never to go to sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man." "Why, sir," said I, "will you go to sea no more?" "That is another case," said he; "it is my calling, and therefore my duty; but as you made this voyage on trial, you see what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist. Perhaps this has all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray," continues he, "what are you; and on what account did you go to sea?" Upon that I told him some of my story; at the end of which he burst out into a strange kind of passion: "What had I done," says he, "that such an unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds." This indeed was, as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were yet agitated by the sense of his loss, and was farther than he could have authority to go. However, he afterwards talked very gravely to me, exhorting me to go back to my father, and not tempt Providence to my ruin, telling me I might see a visible hand of Heaven against me. "And, young man," said he, "depend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father's words are fulfilled upon you."
We parted soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no more; which way he went I knew not. As for me, having some money in my pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should take, and whether I should go home or to sea.
As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts, and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbours, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only, but even everybody else; from whence I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases-viz. that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
In this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed away a while, the remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off, and as that abated, the little motion I had in my desires to return wore off with it, till at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and looked out for a voyage.

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Word Lists:

Boatswain : a ship's officer in charge of equipment and the crew.

Veer : change direction suddenly

Abatement : (often in legal use) the ending, reduction, or lessening of something

Expostulate : express strong disapproval or disagreement

Founder : a person who manufactures articles of cast metal; the owner or operator of a foundry

Persuasion : the action or fact of persuading someone or of being persuaded to do or believe something

Abate : (of something perceived as hostile, threatening, or negative) become less intense or widespread

Handmaid : a female servant.

Pump : a mechanical device using suction or pressure to raise or move liquids, compress gases, or force air into inflatable objects such as tires

Discourse : written or spoken communication or debate

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Additional Information:

Rating: Words in the Passage: 5283 Unique Words: 1,155 Sentences: 104
Noun: 1115 Conjunction: 638 Adverb: 385 Interjection: 11
Adjective: 306 Pronoun: 701 Verb: 874 Preposition: 667
Letter Count: 21,244 Sentiment: Positive / Positive / Positive Tone: Conversational Difficult Words: 704
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