In the summer of 1703, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders were in Daniel Defoe's distant and improbable future; he was locked up, literally, in the horrors of the present: a cell in Newgate Prison, charges of "seditious libel," and thoughts of suicide.
Defoe was a Protestant "Dissenter" or "Nonconformist," and in the chronic 17th and 18th century power-struggles between Dissenters, Church of England Anglicans and hold-over Catholics, this was a dangerous thing to be. ... FULL STORY »
