Daniel Defoe was born in 1660 into a family of Dissenters, a Protestant sect which refused the authority of the Church of England. He was educated at Newington Green, in a one of the best Dissenting Academies, where he studied practical subjects such as modern languages, economics, geography, besides the traditional ones. He started to write in Whig papers; as a journalist his greatest achievement was The Review, periodical which he published two or three times a famous and well-paid intellectual by writing political essays and pamphlets till the reign of Queen Anne, but the queen didn’t approve this, had him arrested, tired and imprisoned. He denied his Whig ideas so as to be freed and became a secret agent for the new government. When he was about sixty, he started to write novels, which were very successful. In 1719 he published his first novel, Robinson Crusoe, which was followed by Capitan Singleton (1720), the voyage story of a captain who becomes a pirate. In 1722 he published Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack. Thanks to the money earned with these works, he could afford a comfortable standard of life. He died in 1731. Continua »