The Parallel Lives

Years ago, in these pages, I confessed that I have read Daniel Defoe’s 1719 fictional tale, “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” multiple times, as well as listened to the audio version.

     Crusoe’s ability to build a life alone on a deserted island in the Caribbean that lasted for over two decades I find fascinating. Scholars label the book “the father of the English novel.” 

     With a little digging and research, I learned that Daniel Defoe’s own life was as fascinating. 

     The man was in and out of legal trouble, often for writing libelous political comments about others. He was in and out of financial trouble, for insuring ships that failed to return to England with the goods, or for running a business into the ground, out of cash, out of profits.  

     Bankruptcy courts, arrest warrants, harsh judges, the pillory, and time spent in a debtors’ prison was part of Daniel Defoe’s resume. Misfortune hounded him. Of himself, he wrote, “No man has tasted differing fortunes more, and thirteen times I have been rich and poor.”

     He may have died when hiding out of sight from his creditors. 

     His marriage to Mary Tuffley though was stable, eight children and 47 years together.

     In 1692, at the age of 32, Defoe declared himself bankrupt because of a debt of 17,000 English pounds. For ten years he struggled to pull himself out of this predicament.

     Yet, Defoe was a prolific writer, 545 titles across a multitude of subjects over different genre: politics, religion, drama, pamphlets, tracts, travel, history, advice, satire, poetry, domesticity, science, technology, propaganda, war, and a host of others.

     Indeed, “The Oxford Handbook on Daniel DeFoe” lists 36 chapters, each written by a different modern scholar on some aspect of Defoe’s works. The first is entitled, “Defoe’s Life and Times,” and the last is “Defoe on Screen.”

     From 1704 until 1713, Defoe wrote and published a periodical, “A Review of the Affairs of France,” three times a week, reporting upon events during the War of the Spanish Succession. That meant he faced a deadline every couple of days, an unimaginable amount of stress.

     In 1702, Defoe published a 29-page pamphlet, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church” and fell into deep trouble.

     In it, Defoe argued that the English monarch and Anglican church officials must exterminate the Dissenters, those Protestants who refused to conform to the Church of England.

     He wrote, “If ever you will establish the best Christian Church in the world. If ever you will suppress the spirit of enthusiasm. If ever you will free the nation from this viperous brood. If you will leave your posterity free from faction and rebellion, this is the time.

     “This is the time to pull up this heretical weed of sedition, that has so long disturbed the peace of our church, and poisoned the good corn.”

     People read his words and felt outraged. Although no author’s name appeared in its pages, his enemies quickly identified Defoe and pressed charges against him for seditious libel. 

     He was arrested in May of 1703, and a judge found him guilty. Defoe was ordered to pay a stiff fine, to stand in the pillory three times, and to serve a lengthy jail sentence.

     Most literary scholars are convinced that Defoe wrote this pamphlet as tongue-in-cheek, not to be taken literally, but as a hoax to show how absurd political and religious leaders can act and think. However, “the irony blew up in Defoe’s face.”

     According to Daniel Defoe, September 30 was the day that Robinson Crusoe swam to shore from a sinking ship, once it stuck fast to a sand bar. The other ten men drowned. Each year on September 30, on a post, Robinson notched another mark, and thus kept a tentative calendar.

     For me, the final days of September marks another birthday, another anniversary. I married for the first and only time two days after my birthday, a convenient way to remind me.