Daniel Defoe, the son of a butcher, was born in 1661 and died in 1731. Much of his career is still a puzzle to literary students because of his extraordinary passion for secrecy. He gained no literary fame until after fifty years of age, although he had written many pamphlets and had conducted a review which gave to Addison the idea of _The Spectator_. Defoe engaged in mercantile business and failed. He also wrote much for the Government, his pungent and persuasive style fitting him for the career of a pamphleteer. But his independence and his lack of tact caused him to lose credit at court and he fell back upon literature. He may be called the first of the newspaper reporters, before the day of the daily newspaper, and he first saw the advantage of the interview. No one has ever surpassed him in the power of making an imaginary narrative seem real and genuine by minute detail artfully introduced. The English-reading public was captured by _Robinson Crusoe_. Four editions were called for in four months, and Defoe met the demand for more stories from his pen by issuing in the following year _Duncan Campbell_, _Captain Singleton_ and _Memoirs of a Cavalier_. It is evident that Defoe had written these works in previous years and had not been encouraged to print them. Readers of today seldom look into these books, but the _Memoirs_ are noteworthy for splendid descriptions of fights between Roundheads and Cavaliers, and _Captain Singleton_ contains a memorable narrative of an expedition across Africa, then an unknown land, which anticipated many of the discoveries of Mungo Park, Bruce, Speke, and Stanley. [Illustration: ILLUSTRATION OF "ROBINSON CRUSOE" BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK WHICH SERVES AS A FRONTISPIECE TO MAJOR'S EDITION OF DEFOE'S ROMANCE, 1831] Defoe's other works are _Moll Flanders_, _Colonel Jack_, _Roxana_, and _Journal of the Plague Year_. Years ago I read all the novels of Defoe, taking them up at night after work hours. They are not to be commended as books that will induce sleep, because they are far too entertaining. Defoe's story of the great plague in London is far more striking than the records of those who actually lived through the terrible months when a great city was converted into a huge charnel-house by the pestilence that walketh by noonday. Pepys in his _Diary_ has many passages on the plague, but these do not appeal to one as Defoe's story does, probably because Pepys did not have the literary faculty.