The Attribution of A Vindication of the Press to Daniel Defoe

Laura A. Curtis

doi:10.1353/sec.1989.0025

‘Poor Protestant Flies’: Conversions to Catholicism in Early Eighteenth Century England

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400009062 ◽

1978 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

pp. 289-304 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Eamon Duffy

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Daniel Defoe ◽

Self Awareness ◽

History Of Religion ◽

The Press ◽

History Of ◽

Roast Beef ◽

Early Eighteenth Century ◽

Popish Plot

Through the stormy and divided history of religion in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England runs one constant and unvarying stream—hatred and fear of popery. That ‘gross and cruel superstition’ haunted the protestant imagination. The murderous paranoia of the popish plot was the last occasion on which catholic blood was spilled in the service of the national obsession, but the need to preserve ‘our Country from Papal Tyranny; our Laws, our Estates, our Liberties from Papal Invasion; our Lives from Papal Persecution; and our Souls from Papal Superstition . . .’ continued to exercise men of every shade of churchmanship, and of none. Throughout the early eighteenth century zealous churchmen sought to keep alive ‘the Spirit of Aversion to Popery whereby the Protestant Religion hath been chiefly supported among us’, and publications poured from the press reminding men of the barbarities of the papists, ancient and modern, the fires of Smithfield and the headman’s axe of Thorn. Catholicism was bloody, tyrannical, enslaving, and cant phrases rolled pat from tongue and pen—popery and arbitrary government, popery and wooden shoes. The tradition was universal, as integral a part of the nation’s self-awareness as beer and roast-beef, and equally above reason. There were, observed Daniel Defoe, ‘ten thousand stout fellows that would spend the last drop of their blood against Popery that do not know whether it be a man or a horse’.

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Reading (and Not Reading) Anonymity: Daniel Defoe, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press and A Vindication of the Press

Authorship ◽

10.21825/aj.v4i1.1106 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Mark Vareschi

Keyword(s):

Daniel Defoe ◽

First Century ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Press ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Minor Works

In this essay I take up the anonymous An Essay on the Regulation of the Press (1704) and A Vindication of the Press (1718), both regularly attributed to Daniel Defoe. While the pamphlets themselves consider anonymity essential to a work being read and interpreted, paradoxically, twentieth- and twenty-first century critics insist on correct attribution as the starting point for interpretation. The consequences and benefits of authorial attribution to these, and other, minor works are not insignificant. The attribution of authorship to a known author ensures that a work will survive; it may even ensure that a work is subject to study and analysis. However, authorial attribution may also foreclose study and analysis because the attributed work, if it is to be by the named author, must be made to cohere within a larger body of work.

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