National Geographic : 1949 Apr
Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731) TO DEFOE'S genius newspapers owe the discovery of two features used to this day-the interview and the lead editorial. He was in fact the first real news reporter in the modern sense. With a remarkable "nose for news" he collected stories wherever he went. Daniel Defoe's masterpiece, Robinson Cru soe, is one of the few books in any language to remain popular for more than two centuries. At the time of its publication in 1719 it went through four editions in as many months, and new and ever more elaborate editions have been coming out at frequent intervals ever since. One of the more recent is illustrated with paintings by the late N. C. Wyeth, American artist, whose picture of Crusoe's raft is reproduced in our plate. The story has been translated into virtually all modern languages. Despite its dime-novel plot, boresome mor alizing, and total lack of love interest, it stands out as one of the most vivid and gripping adventure tales ever written. It is not, however, as some enthusiasts have called it, the first English novel; for it does not, like a true novel, subordinate incident to char acter portrayal. In it the exciting adventures are of paramount importance, and observa tions on the hero's character are confined to pious soliloquies. The story is founded on the experiences of the sailor Alexander Selkirk, who, after being marooned for five years in the Juan FernAndez Islands off thecoast of Chile. was picked up by a British vessel and brought back to Eng land in 1709. According to Selkirk's own statement, he lent his notes to Defoe, but the shifty DIefoe denied this, averring that he had written the story of Crusoe in 1708 before Selkirk's return. Defoe's romance incidentally, it covers 35 years instead of the five of Selkirk's experience-reads neverthe less as if it had been taken right out of a sailor's log. As proved in the Journalof the Plague Year and Memoirs of a Cavalier, Defoe had the newspaper reporter's knack of giving apparent eye-witness details of all events and scenes he recorded, even though he was describing things he had never seen. He doubtless bor rowed from Selkirk's notes, but most of Cru soe's adventures were pure fiction. The chief charm of the story lies in the fact that it is absolutely true to life. Putting himself in the place of an English sailor marooned on a desert island, and luring the reader to do likewise, Defoe made Crusoe live like an Englishman wresting from harsh Nature with his own hands all the things necessary to comfortable living. Rousseau called the book the best treatise on education ever written. Son of a London butcher named Foe, the author of Robinson Crusoe retained his family name until he was about 40 years old, when he began to sign himself Defoe. He lived a varied and turbulent threescore and ten years, passing from poverty to riches and back to penury, from wealthy tile manufacturer to penniless hack writer, from jailbird to popular newspaper editor, from fugitive from justice to secret agent of the Crown. Whether Whigs or Tories were in the ascendancy, he usually contrived to find employment with the ruling power; but his duplicity was made public at length. He published in 1702 The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a violently satirical pam phlet supporting rights of free churches against the "high flyers," as he called Anglicans and Tories. So characteristically realistic was the satire, recommending that all dissenting minis ters be put to death and their followers exiled, that both factions took it literally. Defoe was promptly arrested for seditious libel and sentenced to be fined, exposed in the pillory for three days, and imprisoned for an indefi nite term. Making copy out of his misfortune, he wrote his doggerel Hymn to the Pillory, which begins: Hail hieroglyphic state machine, Contrived to punish fancy in, and had it scattered over London as a hand bill. It won him instant acclaim and brought about his transfer to Newgate Prison, where forthwith he started a popular newspaper. Until he was nearly 60 years old, he con fined his writing principally to political pam phlets, satire in both prose and verse, and polished essays on economics and government. Defoe scored with Robinson Crusoc a suc cess that made him famous and well to do. He wrote stories from then on with amazing rapidity-Captain Singleton, Duncan Camp bell, and Memoirs of a Cavalier in 1720: and in 1722 Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, and The Journal of the Plague Year. No other British writer save perhaps Sir Walter Scott has approached Defoe in volume of literary output. In his more than 200 works there is an astonishing variety of theme and treatment; but all are written in the newspaperman's simple narrative style, and all are distinguished for intense realism. Jonathan Swift, brilliant contemporary of Defoe, published his original Gulliver's Travels in 1726.