nThe novel
Daniel Defoe
A London butcher called Foe had a son who called himself Defoe.Daniel Defoe
(1660–1731) was expert in acceptable truths. He had travelled much, failed as a retail
hosier, welcomed William III to London, been to prison and worked as a spy before
becoming a ‘voyage writer’, a writer who makes you see. Unwary readers have read A
Journal of the Plague Year as an eyewitness report, and Moll Flanders as a moll’s auto-
biography. His tellers give their experience ‘straight’. When Robinson Crusoe gets
back to his wrecked ship,
first I found that all the ship’s provisions were dry and untouched by the water, and
being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread-room and filled my pockets with
biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had not time to lose; I also found
some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I had indeed need
enough of to spirit me for what was before me.
The credibility of this castaway’s adventures (based on the account of Alexander
Selkirk) seems to be guaranteed by his everyday pockets full of factual biscuit. Defoe198 6 · AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: TO 1790
‘Crusoe saving his Goods out of the Wreck of the Ship’
the Wreck of the Ship’: an
illustration from a 1726 edition
of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,
first published in 1719.