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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR
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From prison, Defoe appealed to Robert Harley, a politician, to help set him free and agreed to become a pamphleteer and intelligence agent in return. Harley was affiliated with the Tories who remained in power until the death of Queen Anne and were then replaced by the Whigs. Defoe changed his alliances along with whichever party was in power and ended up working for both sides. During this politically tumultuous time, he also started a periodical called the Review which he wrote singlehandedly for a period of nine years. The Review was, at first, a weekly but later became thrice-weekly; it discussed current events in England and Europe but also expatiated upon religion, trade, manners, morals etc.
Thus, after spending most of his life writing mostly non-fiction and some poetry, Defoe decided, at around the age of sixty, to write a novel. It is generally assumed that the character of Robinson Crusoe borrows much from the real-life adventures of one Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was stranded on the island of Más a Tierra in the south Pacific after a quarrel with his captain. He stayed there for four years after which he was rescued and brought back to England where the account of his adventures was published. Like Crusoe, Selkirk strove to keep up his spirits in isolation and made the best use of the equipment available to him for survival. When Robinson Crusoe was published, it was an unabashedly commercial undertaking which made no effort to appeal to the elite segments of society. This might be the reason why its reputation did not, at first, survive its author's demise in 1731. However, there was a resurgence of interest in Defoe's works in the second half of the eighteenth century when several critics, including, notably, Sir Walter Scott and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, presented their commentary.
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