Daniel Defoe eBooks
eBooks di Daniel Defoe editi da Wisehouse Classics di Formato Mobipocket
Nato a Stoke Newington (Londra) nel 1660 e morto a Moorfields nell'aprile del 1731, dedicò gran parte della vita agli affari e solo per ripagare i debiti accumulati, cominciò in età matura l’attività di scrittore. Esordì come saggista di economia, dimostrandosi in anticipo sui tempi nel sostenere la necessità di creare organismi, quali una banca centrale e un sistema pensionistico, oggi cruciali nel funzionamento dello Stato.
Rinchiuso in carcere con l’accusa di aver diffamato in un saggio la Chiesa d’Inghilterra (La via più breve per i dissenzienti), nel 1719 pubblicò il suo capolavoro, Robinson Crusoe, ispirato alla reale vicenda di un marinaio naufragato su un’isola al largo del Cile. Accolto da un ottimo riscontro di pubblico, il libro è considerato, insieme al Don Chisciotte, una delle prime forme di romanzo moderno, ed è talmente diffuso nel mondo, da vantare il maggior numero di edizioni dopo la Bibbia.
Autore di un secondo romanzo Fortune e sfortune della famosa Moll Flanders (fonte d’ispirazione per numerosi film), Defoe fu apprezzato anche come giornalista e fondatore della rivista The Review, considerata una pietra miliare nella storia del giornalismo.
Robinson Crusoe. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Daniel Defoe - Wisehouse Classics, 2020 -
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra", now part of Chile, which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade.
A Journal of the Plague YearThe First Pandemic Book. E-book. Formato Mobipocket Daniel Defoe - Wisehouse Classics, 2020 -
DANIEL DEFOE (1660 –1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts and was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted with him.Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than three hundred works—books, pamphlets, and journals—on diverse topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of business journalism and economic journalism.A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR is a book by Daniel Defoe, first published in March 1722. It is an account of one man’s experiences of the year 1665, in which the bubonic plague struck the city of London in what became known as the Great Plague of London, the last epidemic of plague in that city. The book is told somewhat chronologically, though without sections or chapter headings, and with frequent digressions and repetitions.Presented as an eyewitness account of the events at the time, it was written in the years just prior to the book’s first publication in March 1722. Defoe was only five years old in 1665 when the Great Plague took place, and the book itself was published under the initials H. F. and is probably based on the journals of Defoe’s uncle, Henry Foe, who, like ‘H. F.’, was a saddler who lived in the Whitechapel district of East London.In the book, Defoe goes to great pains to achieve an effect of verisimilitude, identifying specific neighborhoods, streets, and even houses in which events took place. Additionally, it provides tables of casualty figures and discusses the credibility of various accounts and anecdotes received by the narrator.The book is often compared to the actual, contemporary accounts of the plague in the diary of Samuel Pepys. Defoe’s account, which appears to include much research, is far more systematic and detailed than Pepys’s first-person account.