Daniel Defoe

English trader, writer, and journalist (1660–1731)

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Lived 1660–1731, aged 71United Kingdom

United Kingdom WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
103 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1660–1731
Aged 71
Known for
Robinson Crusoe
1997

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He invented the castaway everyone knows—a shipwrecked sailor on an island who became the template for survival stories still being written three centuries later.

Biography

About

Defoe moved through English life as merchant, journalist, political pamphleteer, and occasional spy before turning to fiction around 1719. Robinson Crusoe appeared that year and tore through four editions before December, launching a genre so durable it earned its own name: the Robinsonade. He followed with Moll Flanders in 1722 and Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress in 1724, helping fix the novel as a serious form in Britain alongside writers like Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. His political tracts landed him in prison and kept him tangled with authorities, but intellectuals and leaders sought…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

said1726

Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

— A System of Magick (1726).

Daniel Defoe

said1715

The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late.

— Character of the Late Dr. S. Annesley (1715).

Daniel Defoe

said1706

All men would be tyrants if they could.

— Jure divino: a satyre, Introduction, l. 2 (1706).

Daniel Defoe

said1703

Hail, hieroglyphic State machine, Contrived to punish fancy in; Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificance disdain!

— Hymn to the Pillory (1703).

Daniel Defoe

said1703

Next, bring some lawyers to thy bar, By innuendo they might all stand there; There let them expiate that guilt, And pay for all that blood their tongues have spilt.

— Hymn to the Pillory (1703).

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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