Robinson Crusoe - Defoe, Daniel

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Résumé :
Continuously in print for over 300 years, Robinson Crusoe is often credited with beginning the genre of realistic fiction. Chapter breaks have been inserted inconsistently in various editions over the years. This printing has breaks following the Ambleside Online reading schedule, and features the unabridged text with 55 in-line and 23 full-page images....

Biographie:
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660 - 24 April 1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations. 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. Defoe wrote many political tracts and often was in trouble with the authorities, including a spell in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted with him. Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works-books, pamphlets, and journals-on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of business journalism and economic journalism. 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 greatest achievement with the novels is the magisterial A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-27), which provided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

Sommaire:
Daniel Foe was born in London c. 1660, the son of James, a prosperous chandler and Presbyterian dissenter. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, which left only his and two other houses standing in the area. As a general merchant, he was able to buy a country estate and a ship, though he was nearly always in debt. He joined the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, but was pardoned. However, he spent a spell in debtor's prison, after which he travelled Europe and Scotland, returning in 1695, when, now surnamed Defoe, he began serving as a Commissioner of the Glass Duty and, in 1696, running a brick and tile factory. He became a prolific pamphleteer, which led him to the pillory and Newgate Prison. In exchange for his liberty, he agreed to work as an intelligence agent for the Tories, then as a propagandist for the Whigs, and then as a mouthpiece for the Anglo-Scottish Union. His novels and non-fiction books occupied him from the mid 1710s until his death in 1731....