Daniel Defoe, born around 1660, experienced the most complex disastrous events in England before the age of seven. In 1664 a Dutch fleet attacked London, in 1665 the plague killed seventy thousand people, and in 1666 the great fire destroyed Defoe's neighborhood, except for three houses, including his own. Born into a family of dissenters, a class of people who refused to conform to the Anglican Church, Defoe was hampered by obstacles from the start. Having received his education at a dissident school and, as West states: "expelled from Oxford and Cambridge and instead received three years of higher education under the Reverend Charles Morton, future vice-president of the Harvard University which trained its students in science, modern languages, and the subtleties of English rhetoric. Defoe learned his lessons well. He took with him a superb prose style and a burning resentment at the upper classes who had refused him entry to Oxbridge, coupled with a thinly disguised desire to join their ranks - a mixture of envy and hatred common among young, middle-class men. even today. » Daniel Defoe was one of the first writers to use both fiction and non-fiction to appeal to as many people as possible. Therefore, Defoe should remain included in today's literary canon because of his contributions to early 18th-century social and moral reform, political consciousness, and the promotion of spiritual exploration. Defoe's first notable publication was An Essay on Projects, a series of proposed social and economic goals. improvement, published in 1697. One of Defoe's works, Robinson Crusoe, written in the early 18th century, was not only very influential at the time of its writing, but continues to be a novel to which many schools around the world refer to. ...... middle of paper ......NDB “Daniel Defoe” Soylent Communications 2010 Web. October 14, 2010http://www.nndb.com/people/759/000026681/.Notablebiographies (Biography of Daniel Defoe (September 21, 2008)Web. October 15, 2010 http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du /Defoe -Daniel.html#ixzz12T16e2t8SparkNotes Publishers. “SparkNote on Robinson Crusoe SparkNotes LLC.SparkNotes.com 2003. Web October 1, 2010. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/crusoe/(Stocks, Tiphanie N.) Daniel Defoe and the Reform of the English Nation: An Examination of His Moralistic Writings) Periodical, Complete: ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Year Published: 2002 Publication Date Free Form: 01/01 Volume: 0335 Number: 0256. Internet. October 1, 2010West, Richard “A paradoxical genius Daniel Defoe: Life and strange and surprising adventures. Carroll and Graf. 427 pp. $26 rated by Philip Zaleski Web. October 14, 2010 http://mural.uv.es/mesne/morethings.html