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Showing results for tags 'daniel defoe'.
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Daniel Defoe was a man of letters and no mistake. I started reading this. It was first published in 1724-6. I thought it would be like The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett, but it is not. It is much more factual. Humphry Clinker was about the doings of the horrible Squire Bramble. This is more like reportage. I am not very far in. Defoe is reporting on East Anglia. So far, the most shocking bit was that there was an area of lowland Essex where disease was rife. The farmers who had grown up there were immune to the diseases, but the wives they kept marrying were not. Why didn't they marry women who had grown up in the area? Anyway, Defoe has got to Ipswich. At one point of time, Ipswich was renowned for building collier ships.
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I have read Robinson Creuso by Daniel Defoe. I thought that book was a bit patchy. The part on the island was good but the beginning and ending were not. I have just started Moll Flanders, supposedly the memoirs of a 'lady of the night' who made good. It has a cynical and hypocritical preface. The person who transcribed the memoirs said he had to tone down the language and cut the most graphic bits, but that the story served as useful instruction to readers, as a warning of what not to do. He said the earlier, more morally abhorrent parts of the story were a necessary contrast to the penitent's later state.
