DEFOE, Daniel

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DEFOE, Daniel [1660?–1731]. Sometimes De Foe, English journalist and novelist, born in London of Flemish descent, son of a chandler, and best known for the novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). He sympathetically represented non-standard varieties of English in works like Colonel Jack (1722) and A Tour thro' Somerset (1724–7), but in An Essay upon Several Projects (1702) proposed that England emulate the Académie française with an ACADEMY appointed ‘to encourage Polite Learning, to polish and refine the English Tongue, and advance the so much neglected Faculty of Correct Language, to establish Purity and Propriety of Stile, and to purge it from all the Irregular Additions that Ignorance and Affectation have introduc'd’. Like other proposals for such an academy, Defoe's concentrated on the literary language, and like them had no practical outcome. See JOURNALISM.

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