18th Century: Daniel Defoe

"Daniel Defoe (1660 [?] – 1731) was an English writer, journalist and spy, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and help popularize the genre in England" (wikipedia)You should be familiar with Moll Flanders. "Considered one of the great English novels, Defoe's book follows Moll Flanders as she struggles to avoid the deadly poverty of 17th-century England. From a prison-birth to final prosperity, Moll reckons love, theft and prostitution in terms of profit and loss and emerges as an extraordinary character" (www.online-literature.com).

• Biography
• Works (etexts)
  • Moll Flanders
    • Summary
    • etext
  • Robinson Crusoe

• "One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand." (Robinson Crusoe)
• "let any one judge what must be the anguish of my mind, when I came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my own mother, and I had now had two children, and was big with another by my own brother, and lay with him still every night.
  I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. Oh! had the story never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have lain with my husband, since as to his being my relation I had known nothing of it" (Moll Flanders)