DEFOE, DANIEL

born 1660, London, Eng. died April 24, 1731, London Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (171922) and Moll Flanders (1722). Additional reading The most up-to-date and fully documented biography is Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe (1989). Also recommended are James Sutherland, Defoe (1937, reprinted 1971); John Robert Moore, Daniel Defoe, Citizen of the Modern World (1958); and F. Bastian, Defoe's Early Life (1981).Critical studies include Arthur Wellesley Secord, Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe (1924, reprinted 1970); Maximillian E. Novak, Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (1962, reprinted 1976), Defoe and the Nature of Man (1963), and Realism, Myth, and History in Defoe's Fiction (1983); G.A. Starr, Defoe & Spiritual Autobiography (1965, reissued 1971); Michael Shinagel, Daniel Defoe and Middle-class Gentility (1968); James Sutherland, Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study (1971); John J. Richetti, Defoe's Narratives (1975); Everett Zimmerman, Defoe and the Novel (1975); Paul K. Alkon, Defoe and Fictional Time (1979); Geoffrey M. Sill, Defoe and the Ideas of Fiction, 17131719 (1983); Laura A. Curtis, The Elusive Daniel Defoe (1984); Ian A. Bell, Defoe's Fiction (1985); Virginia Ogden Birdsall, Defoe's Perpetual Seekers: A Study of the Major Fiction (1985); Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: Ambition & Innovation (1986); and John J. Richetti, Daniel Defoe (1987).The fullest bibliography of Defoe's works is John Robert Moore, A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe, 2nd ed. (1971); but P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens, The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (1988), questions the attribution of many anonymous works to Defoe. Annotated bibliographies of criticism include Spiro Peterson, Daniel Defoe (1987), covering 17311924; and John A. Stoler, Daniel Defoe (1984), covering 19001980.