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Daniel Defoe
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Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th century.
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Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th century.
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Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th century.
Daniel Defoe, engraving by M. Van der Gucht, after a portrait by J. Taverner, first half of the 18th century.

Daniel Defoe

English author
Written by
Reginald P.C. Mutter
Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Sussex, Brighton, England. Editor of The History of Tom Jones.
Reginald P.C. Mutter
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Daniel Defoe (born 1660, London, Eng.—died April 24, 1731, London) was an English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, known as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719–22) and Moll Flanders (1722). Defoe’s father, James Foe, was a hard-working and fairly prosperous tallow chandler (perhaps also, later, a butcher), of Flemish descent. By his middle 30s, Daniel was calling himself “Defoe,” probably reviving a variant of what may have been the original family name. As a Nonconformist, or...

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