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The Shortest Way with
Dissenters 1702
This pamphlet landed Defoe in the pillory when its ironic attack
on the Dissenters was taken seriously. Defoe had sought to discredit the high-church Tories by writing
from their point of view and reducing their arguments to
absurdity. At the time the Tories were determined to prevent
the practice, carried out by dissenters and low churchmen who were
mainly Whigs, of ‘occassional conformity’; the
practice, that is, of receiving the sacraments according to the
rights of the Church of England, in order to qualify for public
service, and then attending dissenters worship services. The
pamphlet land Defoe in trouble with both dissenters and
highchurchmen; he was arrested in May 1703 for seditious libel
and indicted at the Old Bailey as “a seditious man and of a
disordered mind, and a person of a bad name, reputation and
conversation”. He received a harsh sentence: a fine of
200 marks, to stand three times in the pillory and to find sureties
for his good behaviour for seven years. The pamphlet
was the first work for which Defoe became widely known.
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Hymn to the Pillory 1703
Written while Defoe was awaiting trail for sedition, the
Hymn helped to turn his punishment into something of a
triumph, with a glorification of the pillory and the mob drinking
to his health.
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Jure Divino 1706
A long political poem, in twelve books, attacking the divine
right of kings.
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The Life and strange surprising Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe 1719
Published in Feburary in an edition of 1,000, like almost all of
Defoe’s work, Robinson Crusoe was followed some months
later by its sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe. Defoe was not known to his contemporaries as a
novelist; his fictional writings appeared anonymously, and most
were not attributed to him until several decades after his death.
Robinson Crusoe was a commercial success and was translated into
French and German in 1720 and Swedish in 1734.
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The Serious Reflections of Robinson
Crusoe 1720
A collection of moral essays in which Defoe represents his novel
as an allegory of his own life. This was partly a defence
against the disapproval of his fellow Puritans who regarded fiction
as hardly distinquishable from a set of lies.
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Life and Adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell,
The Life of Captain Singleton (dramatic study
of priacy) and Memoires of a Cavalier (depiction of
seventeenth century warfare) 1720
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Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague
Year, The History of Peter the Great, Colonel
Jack (an evocation of the hero’s youth on the streets of
London) 1722
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Roxana, A New Voyage Around the World 1724
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A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great
Britain 1724
A guide-book which appeared in three volumes between 1724-6.
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History of the Pirates 1724
Published between 1724 and 1728.
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The Complete English Tradesman 1725
A celebration of the business ethic and
mercantile values (thrift, energy, self-help, etc.)
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The Political History of the Devil 1726
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The Four Voyages of Captain George
Roberts 1726
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An Essay on . . . Apparitions 1727
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A Plan of the English Commerce, Augusta
Triumphans, A Short View of the State of Ireland 1728
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Augusta Triumphans or The Way to Make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe 1728
One of Defoe's proposals was the establishment of a London University.
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