Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (English: Daniel Defoe; born Daniel Foe; c. 1660, Cripplegate — 24 April 1731, Moorfields) was an English writer and publicist, best known as the author of Robinson Crusoe.

He was born into the family of a Presbyterian butcher and was prepared for the ministry, but had to give up a church career. After graduating from Newington Academy, where he studied Greek and Latin and classical literature, he became a clerk to a wholesale hosier. In the course of his business dealings he often visited Spain and France, where he became acquainted with European life and improved his language skills.

Later, for a time, he was himself the owner of a hosiery business and then first the manager and later the owner of a large brick and tile works, but he went bankrupt. In general, Defoe was an enterprising businessman with an adventurous streak — a type widespread in that era. He was also one of the most active politicians of his time. A talented publicist, pamphleteer, and publisher, he, without holding any official government office, at one time exercised considerable influence over the king and the government.

Journalism and publicism

Defoe began his literary career with political pamphlets (anonymous) and newspaper articles. He showed himself to be a talented satirist and publicist. He wrote on a variety of political topics. In one of his works, An Essay upon Projects, he proposed improving communications, establishing banks, savings banks for the poor, and insurance companies. The significance of his projects was enormous, if one considers that at that time almost nothing he proposed existed. The functions of banks were performed by moneylenders and goldsmith-bankers. The Bank of England, now one of the centers of world financial capital, had only just opened at that time.

Defoe gained especially wide popularity with the appearance of his pamphlet The True-Born Englishman. Eighty thousand copies were sold semi-legally in the streets of London within a few days. The pamphlet appeared as a result of attacks by the aristocracy on King William III, who defended bourgeois interests. The aristocrats attacked the king in particular for being