DE FOE, DANIEL. – English writer, b. perhaps in Sept. 1660 in Londra, d. there on 26 Apr. 1731. He began as a merchant and journalist; a nonconformist and dissenter, he then entered politics as a secret informant for the Whigs; he was imprisoned and sentenced to the pillory (1702) for the pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; released two years later, he began publishing the newspaper The Review (1704).
Returning to a life of political intrigue and espionage, through The Review (suppressed in 1713) he gave a new direction to the journalism of his time. The year 1706 marks the first indication of D.’s turn toward works of fiction (A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal), but only in 1719 did his first truly fundamental work appear, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, whose success led him to compose other novels of fiction and adventure.
He also wrote on commerce, morality, and economics (listed in the Index [decr. 24 Apr. 1743] 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 spheres; but what might appear to be hypocrisy or cynical amorality greedily concerned only with profit is redeemed by the sincerity of a naïve human confession and by the great spontaneity of his art. His Puritanism, often laxistically betrayed in his life and work, is the symptom of an age in decline; nevertheless, D. confronted the problem of God with sincere anxiety.