DE FOE, DANIEL. - English writer, born perhaps in September 1660 in London, died there on 26 April 1731. He began as a merchant and publicist; a nonconformist and dissenter, he then turned to politics as a secret informer for the Whigs; he was imprisoned and sentenced to the pillory (1702) for the libel *The Shortest Way with the Dissenters*; released two years later, he began publishing the newspaper *The Review* (1704).
Resuming a life of political intrigue and espionage, with *The Review* (suppressed in 1713) he gave a new direction to journalism of his time. The year 1706 marks the first hint of DE FOE’s turn to works of fiction (*A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal*), but it was only in 1719 that his first truly fundamental work appeared, *The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner*, whose success led him to compose other novels of fantasy and adventure.
He also wrote on commerce, morals, and economics (his *Political History of the Devil as well Ancient as Modern* was placed on the Index [decree of 24 April 1743]). His writings reflect the many inconsistencies and contradictions of his life, from the religious to the moral and political spheres; yet what might seem hypocrisy or cynical amorality driven solely by profit is redeemed by the sincerity of a naive human confession and by the great spontaneity of his art. His often laxly betrayed Puritanism, both in life and work, is symptomatic of an age in decline; nevertheless, DE FOE felt the problem of God with sincere anxiety.