The first futurist

Jeremy Black argues there is more to Daniel Defoe than Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe. He was a prescient thinker consumed by individual redemption and social improvement

He told us, that he had given Mrs [Elizabeth] Montagu a catalogue of all Daniel Defoe’s works of imagination; most, if not all of which, as well as of his other works, he now enumerated, allowing a considerable share of merit to a man, who, bred a tradesman, had written so variously and so well. Indeed, his Robinson Crusoe is enough of itself to establish his reputation. —Samuel Johnson, 10 April 1778 A UNIFYING THEME IN THE LIFE OF DANIEL Defoe (1660-1731) was the pursuit of the future — a future of individual redemption and social improvement. This pursuit was partly inspired by Defoe’s position as an outsider to the present. A Protestant Dissenter from the Church of England whose joining the unsuccessful 1685 Monmouth rebellion against King James II was…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2024

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