1.
Daniel Defoe
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Daniel Defoe, born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. He was also a pioneer of economic journalism, Daniel Foe was probably born in Fore Street in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. Defoe later added the aristocratic-sounding De to his name, and on occasion claimed descent from the family of De Beau Faux and his birthdate and birthplace are uncertain, and sources offer dates from 1659–1662, with 1660 considered the most likely. His father James Foe was a tallow chandler and a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. In 1667, when he was probably about seven, a Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River Thames and his mother Annie had died by the time he was about ten. Defoe was educated at the Rev. James Fishers boarding school in Pixham Lane in Dorking, during this period, the English government persecuted those who chose to worship outside the Church of England. Defoe entered the world of business as a merchant, dealing at different times in hosiery, general woollen goods. His ambitions were great and he was able to buy a country estate, in 1684, Defoe married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant, receiving a dowry of £3,700 – a huge amount by the standards of the day. With his debts and political difficulties, the marriage may have been troubled, in 1685, Defoe joined the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion but gained a pardon, by which he escaped the Bloody Assizes of Judge George Jeffreys. Queen Mary and her husband William III were jointly crowned in 1688, and Defoe became one of Williams close allies, some of the new policies led to conflict with France, thus damaging prosperous trade relationships for Defoe, who had established himself as a merchant. In 1692, Defoe was arrested for debts of £700, though his total debts may have amounted to £17,000 and his laments were loud and he always defended unfortunate debtors, but there is evidence that his financial dealings were not always honest. Following his release, he travelled in Europe and Scotland, and it may have been at this time that he traded wine to Cadiz, Porto. By 1695, he was back in England, now using the name Defoe and serving as a commissioner of the glass duty. In 1696, he ran a tile and brick factory in what is now Tilbury in Essex, Defoes first notable publication was An Essay upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement, published in 1697. From 1697 to 1698, he defended the right of King William III to an army during disarmament. His most successful poem, The True-Born Englishman, defended the king against the perceived xenophobia of his enemies, satirising the English claim to racial purity. In 1701, Defoe presented the Legions Memorial to the Speaker of the House of Commons, later his employer Robert Harley and it demanded the release of the Kentish petitioners, who had asked Parliament to support the king in an imminent war against France. The death of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval, in it, he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters who hypocritically practised so-called occasional conformity, such as his Stoke Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney
2.
Novel
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A novel is any relatively long piece of written narrative fiction, normally in prose, and typically published as a book. The genre has also described as possessing, a continuous. This view sees the novels origins in Classical Greece and Rome, medieval, early modern romance, the latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. The romance is a closely related long prose narrative, Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel, a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, a novel is a long, fictional narrative which describes intimate human experiences. Most European languages use the word romance for extended narratives, fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography. However this can be a problematic criterion, historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity. Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byrons Don Juan, Alexander Pushkins Yevgeniy Onegin, vikram Seths The Golden Gate, composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel. Both in 12th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations, on the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to a select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters. A new world of Individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, conduct and gallantry spread with novels, the novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella, short story, and flash fiction. However, in the 17th century critics saw the romance as of epic length, the length of a novel can still be important because most literary awards use length as a criterion in the ranking system. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song Dynasty China led to the evolution of oral storytelling into consciously fictional novels by the Ming dynasty, parallel European developments did not occur for centuries, and awaited the time when the availability of paper allowed for similar opportunities. By contrast, Ibn Tufails Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic philosophy, in this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a philosophical novel, while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological novel. Epic poetry exhibits some similarities with the novel, and the Western tradition of the novel back into the field of verse epics. Then at the beginning of the 18th century, French prose translations brought Homers works to a wider public, longus is the author of the famous Greek novel, Daphnis and Chloe. Romance or chivalric romance is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the circles of High Medieval. In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love
3.
Great Plague of London
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The Great Plague, lasting from 1665 to 1666, was the last major epidemic of the bubonic plague to occur in England. The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people - almost a quarter of Londons population - in 18 months, the plague was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which is usually transmitted through the bite of an infected rat flea. As in other European cities of the period, the plague was endemic in 17th century London, the disease periodically erupted into massive epidemics. There were 30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603,35,000 in 1625, during the winter of 1664, a bright comet was to be seen in the sky and the people of London were fearful, wondering what evil event it portended. London at that time consisted of a city of about 448 acres surrounded by a city wall, there were gates at Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Moorgate and Bishopsgate and to the south lay the River Thames and London Bridge. In the poorer parts of the city, hygiene was impossible to maintain in the tenements and garrets. There was no sanitation, and open drains flowed along the centre of winding streets, the cobbles were slippery with animal dung, rubbish and the slops thrown out of the houses, muddy and buzzing with flies in summer and awash with sewage in winter. The City Corporation employed rakers to remove the worst of the filth, the stench was overwhelming and people walked around with handkerchiefs or nosegays pressed against their nostrils. Some of the necessities such as coal arrived by barge. Carts, carriages, horses and pedestrians were crowded together and the gateways in the wall formed bottlenecks through which it was difficult to progress, the nineteen-arch London Bridge was even more congested. The better-off used hackney carriages and sedan chairs to get to their destinations without getting filthy, the poor walked, and might be splashed by the wheeled vehicles and drenched by slops being thrown out and water falling from the overhanging roofs. Another hazard was the black smoke belching forth from factories which made soap, from breweries and iron smelters. Outside the city walls, suburbs had sprung up providing homes for the craftsmen and these were shanty towns with wooden shacks and no sanitation. The government had tried to control this development but had failed, other immigrants had taken over fine town houses, vacated by Royalists who had fled the country during the Commonwealth, converting them into tenements with different families in every room. These properties were soon vandalised and became rat-infested slums, administration of the City of London was organised by the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and common councillors, but not all of the inhabited area generally comprising London was legally part of the City. Both inside the City and outside its boundaries there were also Liberties, Westminster was an independent town with its own liberties, although it was joined to London by urban development. The Tower of London was an independent liberty, as were others, areas north of the river not part of one of these administrations came under the authority of the county of Middlesex, and south of the river under Surrey. At that time, bubonic plague was a much feared disease and it was not until 1894 that the identification by Alexandre Yersin of its causal agent Yersinia pestis was made and the transmission of the bacterium by rat fleas became known
4.
Samuel Pepys
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Samuel Pepys FRS was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary that he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Pepys had no experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy, the detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War. Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys, a tailor and his great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of Parliament for Cambridge in 1625. His fathers first cousin Sir Richard Pepys was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but child mortality was high and he was soon the oldest survivor. He was baptised at St Brides Church on 3 March, Pepys did not spend all of his infancy in London, for a while, he was sent to live with nurse Goody Lawrence at Kingsland, just north of the city. In about 1644, Pepys attended Huntingdon Grammar School before being educated at St Pauls School, London and he attended the execution of Charles I in 1649. In 1650, he went to Cambridge University, having received two exhibitions from St Pauls School and a grant from the Mercers Company. In October, he was admitted as a sizar to Magdalene College, he moved there in March 1651, later in 1654 or early in 1655, he entered the household of another of his fathers cousins, Sir Edward Montagu, who was later created 1st Earl of Sandwich. From a young age, Pepys suffered from stones in his urinary tract – a condition from which his mother and brother John also later suffered. He was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, by the time of his marriage, the condition was very severe. In 1657 Pepys decided to undergo surgery, not an option, as the operation was known to be especially painful. Nevertheless, Pepys consulted surgeon Thomas Hollier and, on 26 March 1658, Pepys stone was successfully removed and he resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation, which he did for several years. However, there were long-term effects from the operation, the incision on his bladder broke open again late in his life. The procedure may have left him sterile, though there is no evidence for this. In mid-1658 Pepys moved to Axe Yard, near the modern Downing Street and he worked as a teller in the Exchequer under George Downing. On 1 January 1660, Pepys began to keep a diary and he recorded his daily life for almost ten years
5.
Robinson Crusoe
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Robinson Crusoe /ˌrɒbɪnsən ˈkruːsoʊ/ is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the works protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading readers to believe he was a real person. Despite its simple 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, Crusoe sets sail from the Queens Dock in Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who want him to pursue a career, possibly in law. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm and this journey, too, ends in disaster, as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor. Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury, the ship is en route to Brazil. Crusoe sells Xury to the captain, with the captains help, Crusoe procures a plantation. He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north and he sees penguins and seals on his island. As for his arrival there, only he and three animals, the dog and two cats, survive the shipwreck. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and he builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. By making marks in a cross, he creates a calendar. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and some he makes himself from ironwood, he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery and he also adopts a small parrot. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing, more years pass and Crusoe discovers native cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. At first he plans to them for committing an abomination but later realizes he has no right to do so. He dreams of obtaining one or two servants by freeing prisoners, when a prisoner escapes, Crusoe helps him, naming his new companion Friday after the day of the week he appeared. Crusoe then teaches him English and converts him to Christianity, after more natives arrive to partake in a cannibal feast, Crusoe and Friday kill most of the natives and save two prisoners. One is Fridays father and the other is a Spaniard, who informs Crusoe about other Spaniards shipwrecked on the mainland. A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Fridays father and bring back the others, build a ship, before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears, mutineers have commandeered the vessel and intend to maroon their captain on the island
6.
A General History of the Pyrates
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Its author uses the name Captain Charles Johnson, generally considered a pseudonym for one of Londons writer-publishers. The book also contains the name of the flag the Jolly Roger. First appearing in Charles Rivingtons shop in London, the book sold so well that by 1726 an enlarged fourth edition had appeared and it pandered to the British publics taste for the exotic, revelling in graphic stories on the high seas. English naval historian David Cordingly writes, it has said, and there seems no reason to question this. Scottish novelists Robert Louis Stevenson and J. M, the author has remained unknown in spite of numerous attempts by historians to discover his identity. Many scholars have suggested that the author could have been either Daniel Defoe or publisher Nathaniel Mist, the books first publisher of record, Charles Rivington, had printed many books for Mist, who lived just a few yards from his office. More importantly, the General History was registered at Her Majestys Stationery Office in Mists name, the author specifically cites two pirates as having named their flag Jolly Roger, Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts in June 1721, and English pirate Francis Spriggs in December 1723. The book gives an almost mythical status to the colourful characters, such as the infamous English pirates Blackbeard. It provides the account of the lives of many people still famous in the 21st century. The book was released in two volumes, the first mostly deals with early 18th-century pirates, while Volume II records the exploits of their predecessors a few decades earlier. In the first volume, the author sticks fairly close to the available sources and he stretches the truth farther in the second volume, and includes the biographies of three subjects who may be entirely fictional. The book has been influential in shaping popular notions of piracy. The buccaneers profiled in Volume I are, Volume II features, as well as biographies of the probably fictional captains James Misson, Lewis, under the Black Flag, The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates
7.
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters
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The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church is a pamphlet by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1702. Defoe was prompted to write the pamphlet by the hostility towards Dissenters in the wake of the accession of Queen Anne to the throne. It is written in the style as the Tory publications that attacked Dissenters. The pamphlet raised embarrassing questions about the handling of the issue by the Tory ministry and his imprisonment, during which he fell into bankruptcy, was to have a lasting influence on his subsequent writings. In the years after his release, Defoe published several pamphlets that attempted to explain its purpose, in 1702, King William III died, and Queen Anne succeeded to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland. Defoe was supportive of religious freedom, though he was critical of the device and he had written against it in a pamphlet entitled An enquiry into occasional conformity, Shewing that the dissenters are no way concernd in it In the same year, hostility towards Dissenters increased. A Bill against occasional conformity was passed through the House of Commons, figures such as Henry Sacheverell, a High church clergyman, warned against Dissenters assuming positions of political power. His lead was followed by the Tory press, who published a number of sermons, in December, Defoe published his own pamphlet, The Shortest Way, assuming the same stylistic conventions as the Sacheverell and the Tory publications. The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church is a pamphlet consisting of twenty-nine pages and it opens with the fable of the Cock and the Horses. The Cock, lacking any perch in the stable, is forced to rest on the ground and in fear of the Horses moving around and stepping on him, advises, “Pray, Gentlefolks. For fear we should tread upon one another. ”The speaker then applies this to the contemporary situation, the next section accuses the Dissenters of involvement with various notorious and hideous events of the past century, including the English Civil War and Monmouths Rebellion. The accusations become increasingly sinister, and at points the speaker addresses the Dissenters. A brief history is given of how past monarchs—from James I to William III—have treated the Dissenters, in the opinion of the speaker, the major section comprises a series of arguments for why the Dissenters should be treated favourably. The speaker denounces each in turn and offers several counter-arguments, each gradually escalating in their severity, a vision is given of what will happen to the Church of England if it is not defended against the Dissenters. Miriam Laurenbaum has suggested that it is instead a form of hoax or banter, Paul Alkon describes the critical tradition surrounding the work as asking mainly whether it is inadequate irony, deficient satire, or misused impersonation. Ashley Marshall suggests that The Shortest-Way is best understood not as insufficiently ironic but as a counterfeit, the difficulty for Defoes contemporaries in assessing whether the work was ironic was the proximity of the speakers voice to that of the High Anglicans whose views are being ridiculed. The pamphlet mixes both real observation and fabrication, and assumes the style of his target. Defoe uses and imitates the language and metaphor of fanatical churchman, particularly Sacheverells sermons, upon its publication, The Shortest Way provoked immediate and passionate reactions from both sides of the debate
8.
John Gow
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John Gow was a notorious pirate whose short career was immortalised by Charles Johnson in A General History of the Pyrates. Gow was probably born in Wick, Caithness, to William Gow, a merchant and he was raised in Stromness, Orkney where he went to school and learned to sail a ship. Prior to August 1724 he crewed a voyage from London to Lisbon and back and he failed to attract sufficient numbers, however, and the effort went nowhere. In London, word spread about the attempt, so Gow fled to Amsterdam, after several months layover in Santa Cruz, on 3 November 1724 the Caroline departed for Genoa, Italy, with a cargo of beeswax, leather, and woolens. The shipboard climate, however, was troubled, there were complaints about the food on board the ship, and Freneau, the captain of the Caroline, was accused of treating the other crewmen of the vessel improperly. Grousing of short allowance, the crewmen of the Caroline started to disobey some of the captains orders, the captain, realising that his orders were being disobeyed, consulted his mate. The two men agreed to some small arms in the cabin so they could defend themselves in case of mutiny. Unfortunately for the captain, two of the conspirators on the upper deck overheard the conversation, not realising that Gow was the ring leader of the attempted mutiny, Freneau ordered Gow to prepare arms to defend the crew. Upon hearing this, the decided to act that night. At ten p. m. after half the company had retired following evening prayer. Told that someone had fallen overboard, Freneau ran to the rail, still alive, he managed to clutch a rope dangling from the side of the ship, but when the conspirators realised this, they cut the rope and he tumbled into the sea. The next morning, the remainder of the crew was given the option of following their captain or joining the mutineers, accounts indicate that they all accepted their former position. Over the next few weeks the Revenge began attacking British ships in the area, starting with the Delight, the crews were usually set adrift, though some deemed useful were given the option of joining Gows crew. Over the next few months, Gow attacked several other ships plying the region, after a successful career as a pirate off the Iberian Peninsula, Gow decided to return to the Orkney Islands. He was running low on supplies, and the authorities were on his trail, arriving in early 1725, he adopted the name Mr. Smith for himself, and renamed his vessel the George, and passed as a wealthy trader, even courting a Miss Gordon. He was eventually recognised by a merchant passing through the islands, according to other accounts, some of his prisoners escaped there and notified the authorities. According to the Newgate Calendar, Gow was slow to die when he hanged. To relieve his pain, some of his friends pulled at his legs, after his death, his body was left in the River Thames
9.
LibriVox
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On 6 August 2016, the project completed project number 10,000. Most releases are in the English language, but many works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that are providing additional content, LibriVox is closely affiliated with Project Gutenberg from where the project gets some of its texts, and the Internet Archive that hosts their offerings. LibriVox was started in August 2005 by Montreal-based writer Hugh McGuire, who set up a blog, the first recorded book was The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. LibriVox is an invented word inspired by Latin words liber in its genitive form libri and vox, the word was also coined because of other connotations as liber also means child and free, independent, unrestricted. As the LibriVox forum says it, We like to think LibriVox might be interpreted as child of the voice, finally, the other link we like is library so you could imagine it to mean Library of Voice. There has been no decision or consensus by LibriVox founders or the community of volunteers for a single pronunciation of LibriVox and it is accepted that any audible pronunciation is accurate. LibriVox is a volunteer-run, free content, Public Domain project and it has no budget or legal personality. The development of projects is managed through an Internet forum, supported by an admin team, in early 2010, LibriVox ran a fundraising drive to raise $20,000 to cover hosting costs for the website of about $5, 000/year and improve front- and backend usability. Volunteers can choose new projects to start, either recording on their own or inviting others to join them, once a volunteer has recorded his or her contribution, it is uploaded to the site, and proof-listened by members of the LibriVox community. Finished audiobooks are available from the LibriVox website, and MP3, recordings are also available through other means, such as iTunes, and, being free of copyright, they are frequently distributed independently of LibriVox on the Internet and otherwise. LibriVox only records material that is in the domain in the United States. Because of copyright restrictions, LibriVox produces recordings of only a number of contemporary books. These have included, for example, the 9/11 Commission Report and it contains much popular classic fiction, but also includes less predictable texts, such as Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason and a recording of the first 500 digits of pi. The collection also features poetry, plays, religious texts and non-fiction of various kinds, in January 2009, the catalogue contained approximately 55 percent fiction and drama,25 percent non-fiction and 20 percent poetry. By the end of 2016, the most viewed item was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a 2006 solo recording by John Greenman, around 90 percent of the catalogue is recorded in English, but recordings exist in 31 languages altogether. Chinese, French and German are the most popular languages other than English amongst volunteers, LibriVox has garnered significant interest, in particular from those interested in the promotion of volunteer-led content and alternative approaches to copyright ownership on the Internet. It has received support from the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg, intellectual freedom and commons proponent Mike Linksvayer described it in 2008 as perhaps the most interesting collaborative culture project this side of Wikipedia
A Journal of the Plague Year public domain audiobook at LibriVox
