Cover of Memoirs of a Cavalier by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe

Memoirs of a Cavalier

First published 1840 · Public Domain214 pagesJ.M. Dent
FictionBiographyAdventureClassics

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About This Book

Published in 1720, Memoirs of a Cavalier is a work of historical fiction by Daniel Defoe that follows an English gentleman through the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil War. The unnamed narrator serves under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden before returning to England to fight for the Royalist cause. Defoe's meticulous use of historical detail creates such a convincing account that the book was long debated as a genuine memoir. This technique of embedding fiction within verifiable events represents an early experiment in the historical novel, predating Walter Scott by a century. Essential for scholars of early English fiction and Civil War historiography.

Excerpt

It may suffice the reader, without being very inquisitive after my name, that I was born in the county of Salop, in the year 1608, under the government of what star I was never astrologer enough to examine; but the consequences of my life may allow me to suppose some extraordinary influence affected my birth.— Opening of Memoirs of a Cavalier

About the Author

Daniel Defoe
1660 – 1731

Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) was an English writer, journalist, and merchant often credited as the father of the English novel. Born Daniel Foe in London to a family of religious dissenters, he changed his name around 1695 to suggest genteel origins. Before turning to fiction, he was a hosiery trader, a political pamphleteer, and a government spy; he was even pilloried and imprisoned for his satirical pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). At fifty-nine, he published Robinson Crusoe (1719), whose tale of shipwreck and self-reliance captured readers worldwide and never went out of print. He followed it with Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), and Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), among others. Defoe's realist narrative style and eye for social detail laid the groundwork for the entire tradition of English prose fiction.

Publication Details

First Published1840
PublisherJ.M. Dent
Pages214
ISBN9781973821502
LanguageEn
CopyrightPublic Domain
Open LibraryView editions