Daniel Defoe in his fifties: portrait by or in the style of Godfrey Kneller

 

1516    Thomas More publishes Utopia.

1620    The Pilgrim Fathers land in Plymouth, New England.

1626    Francis Bacon publishes the utopian novel New Atlantis.

1642    The English civil war begins.

1649    Charles I is executed; Oliver Cromwell becomes head of the Commonwealth.

1651    The Civil war ends at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September.

+ That same year, Thomas Hobbes publishes the political treaty Leviathan.

1658    Oliver Cromwell dies on 3 September, and is replaced as Lord Protector by his son, Richard.

1660    Daniel Foe is born in London, the son of James and Alice Foe.

+ That same year, the monarchy is restored: Charles II becomes king of England.

1662   The Act of Uniformity forces the Foe family to become Presbyterian dissenters.

1665   The Great Plague kills 68,500 people in London.

1666   The Great Fire of London destroys two-thirds of the city.

+ That same year, John Bunyan publishes his spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

1667    John Milton publishes the poem Paradise Lost.

1668   Alice Foe dies.

1671    Foe is educated at the Reverend James Fischer’s religious boarding school in Surrey, then at Reverend Charles Morton’s academy for Dissenters at Newington Green in London.

1678    John Bunyan publishes the Christian allegory Pilgrim’s Progress.

1680    Robert Filmer publishes Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings, defending absolutist monarchy and the divine right of kings.

1683    Foe enters the world of business as a merchant.

1684    Foe marries Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a rich dissenting London merchant, with whom he will have 8 children, 6 of whom will survive.

1685    Charles II dies and is succeeded by his brother, the Catholic James II.

+ That same year, Foe joins the rebellion against James II led by the Duke of Monmouth.

1688    The Glorious Revolution forces James II to vacate the throne. Mary, James’s daughter, and her husband, William of Orange, are jointly crowned as Queen Mary and King William III.

1689    John Locke publishes Two Treatises of Government.

1692    Foe is forced to declare bankruptcy for £17,000 and is sent to debtors’ prison.

1694    The Bank of England is founded.

1695   Foe adds the aristocratic-sounding “De” to his name.

+ That same year, Timothy Cruso publishes the moral guidebook God the Guide of Youth.

1697    Defoe publishes his first major text, An Essay on Projects.

+ That same year, Queen Mary dies, and the English privateer and explorer William Dampier publishes A New Voyage Round the World.

1701    Defoe publishes the poem True-Born Englishman, defending William III against the xenophobia of his enemies, and satirising the English claim to racial purity.

1702   William III and is succeeded by Queen Anne, James II’s other daughter, who soon starts to persecute Dissenters.

+ That same year, Defoe publishes the pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, lampooning High Church bigotry.

+ That same year, England declares war against France and Spain: the War of the Spanish succession will last until 1713 and the Treaty of Utrecht.

1703    In July, Defoe is charged with sedition and sentenced to stand in the pillory for 3 days. He is released thanks to Robert Harley and starts working for him and the Tory government.

+ On 26 November, the Great Storm rages across England, killing more than 8,000 people.

1704    Defoe publishes The Storm and sets up the periodical A Review, which runs until 1713.

+ That same year, George Pslamanazar publishes the Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa(1704), which proves to be a fake.

1705    Defoe produces The Consolidator (or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon), his first novel in the form of a voyage to the moon.

1706    Defoe publishes Jure Divino, which criticizes theories on the divine right of kings.

1707    The Act of Union between England and Scotland.

1709    Defoe publishes his History of the Union of Great Britain.

+ That same year, Alexander Selkirk is discovered by the English captain Woodes Rogers on the island of Juan Fernandez, after 4 years and 4 months alone.

1710    The Statute of Queen Anne recognizes authors’ rights and protects copyright for 28 years.

1711    The South Sea Company is granted monopoly of trade with the colonies in South America.

1712    Woodes Rogers publishes A Cruising Voyage Around the World.

1713    The “asiento” with Spain gives Britain monopoly over the shipping and selling of slaves in Spanish colonies in South America for the next 30 years.

+ That same year, Defoe is sent to prison repeatedly by Robert Harley’s political enemies.

1714    Queen Anne dies and is succeeded by George I, the Elector of Hanover.

+ That same year, Bernard Mandeville publishes The Fable of the Bees, one of the earliest conceptualisations of the division of labour.

1715    Defoe publishes the first volume of a conduct manual entitled The Family Instructor.

1719    On April 25, Defoe publishes The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

+ That same year, Charles Gildon publishes the parody The Life & Strange Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D— De F—, lampooning Defoe’s novel and the author himself.

1720    Defoe publishes two sequels entitled The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and another novel, Captain Singleton.

+ That same year, the South Sea Company goes bankrupt (“South Sea Bubble”).

1721   Robert Walpole is appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

+ That same year, Jonathan Swift publishes Gulliver’s Travels.

1722    Defoe publishes the novels Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders, the conduct manual Religious Courtship, and A Journal of the Plague Year, a semi-fictional narrative on the Great Fire of 1666.

1724    Defoe publishes the novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress and the travelogue A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain.

1726   Defoe publishes the treaty The Complete English Tradesman.

1727   George I dies and is succeeded by George II.

+ That same year, Defoe publishes another conduct manual The New Family Instructor and the semi-fictional narrative A Journal of the Plague Year, on the Great Plague of 1665.

1728    Defoe publishes the essay Augusta Triumphans: Or, the Way to Make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe.

1731    Defoe died on April 24 and is buried in the cemetery of Bunhill Fields in London.

+ That same year, the German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel publishes Der Insel Felsenburg, in which the term ‘Robinsonade’ is first coined.

1762    Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes L’Emile, ou De l’éducation, which pays tribute to Robinson Crusoe.

1776    Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations.

1816    Johann David Wyss’s novel is translated by William Godwin under the title The Swiss Family Robinson.

1833    The selling and use of slaves is banned in all British colonies.

1904    The German sociologist Max Weber publishes The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus)

1954    The Spanish film-maker Luis Bunuel adapts Defoe’s novel for the screen in Las Aventuras de Robinson Crusoe.

1967    The French novelist Michel Tournier publishes Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique.

2019   Events around the world celebrate the tercentenary of Robinson Crusoe.