De Foe, Daniel

DE FOE, DANIEL. - English writer, b. perhaps in Sept. 1660 in London, d. there on 26 Apr. 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 publication of the newspaper The Review (1704).

Having resumed a life of political intrigue and espionage, with The Review (suppressed in 1713) he gave a new direction to the journalism of his time. The year 1706 marks the first hint of D.'s turn to works of fiction (A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal), but only in 1719 did his first truly fundamental work see the light, 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 (placed on the Index [decree of 24 Apr. 1743] is Political history of the devil as well ancient as modern). His writings reflect the many incongruities and contradictions of his life, from the religious sphere to the moral and political one; but what might appear as hypocrisy or cynical amoralism greedy only for profit is redeemed by the sincerity of a naive human confession and by the great spontaneity of his art. His Puritanism, often laxly betrayed in his life and work, is the symptom of an age in decline; nevertheless D. felt the problem of God with a sincere anxiety.

Amata Martorelli