Although Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is typically referred to as an “English novelist,” he was also a pamphleteer, journalist, and an excellent storyteller who overnight became famous for writing Robinson Crusoe (1719), a story of a man shipwrecked alone on an island. Some literary historians have placed him along with Samuel Richardson as the founder of the English novel, but, according to the definition of the novel, Defoe is not a novelist. And although this is meant to be a biography of Defoe, it is important to briefly explain why he should not be thought of as a novelist, though some of his works, including Robinson Crusoe and Roxana, may certainly be considered as precursors to the novel form. 

A novel is a realistic story of some substance and length, with a clear social purpose, with a plot and characters, and in which the three elements are structurally interrelated so that development in one systemically affects the development of the other two elements of the novel. What we need to acknowledge here before returning to Defoe’s biography is that throughout his life, whether as a businessman, government employee, spy, journalist, poet, or storyteller, Defoe seemed to greatly value facts, history, and the real events of his times. Defoe was born as the son of James Foe, a butcher of Stroke Newington. He studied at Charles Morton's Academy, London, a school founded and patronized by nonconformist Christians who resisted the domination of the state religion which, at that time, was Anglicanism, or the Church of England. The Academy was famous for its opposition to Canterbury, the seat of the Anglican Church. Its principal was later the vice president of Harvard University.

Although his nonconformist father intended him for the ministry, Defoe’s passion lay in politics and trade, and he seemed to be irresistibly drawn toward the intrigues created by these two. He travelled extensively in Europe, and when he returned to England in the early 1680s, Defoe was a commissioned merchant in Cornhill. He went bankrupt in 1691 despite the fact that in 1684 he had married a wealthy widow, Mary Tuffley; they had two sons and five daughters.
Defoe earned fame and royal favor with his satirical poem "The True Born Englishman" (1701). The poem proves Defoe's radicalism. In this poem, written over three hundred years ago, Defoe argues that there is no “true born Englishman,” because almost every Englishman in London has come from somewhere else, an idea that is still a contemporary multicultural debate in the United States and in Britain.

Defoe’s next important publication is perhaps even more interesting. In 1702 he wrote the famous pamphlet "The Shortest Way With Dissenters." Himself a dissenter, he mimicked the extreme attitudes of High Anglican Tories, thus satirizing them, pretending to argue for the extermination of all dissenters. But the pamphlet offended Anglicans and dissenters alike. With the Anglicans he achieved his objective, but he completely missed the mark with his own people, the dissenters. Not understanding his irony, they took him literally. Some of the more intellectual and politically motivated Anglicans, however, who understood the satire, nevertheless instigated the usually poor dissenters and the latter rose against Defoe. This was a classic case of the satirist entrapped by his own satire. Defoe was arrested, thrown into prison, but before that was pilloried in May 1703. But Defoe would not quit. From prison, he wrote a mock ode, "Hymn to the Pillory" (1703). The poem was sold in the streets, and the audience drank to his health while he stood in the pillory and read aloud his verses.

Fortunately for him, the Tories fell from...