Keywords
prose fiction, frontispieces, portraits, portraiture, authorship, engravings, Robinson Crusoe
Document Type
Features
Abstract
Daniel Defoe’s physical appearance was often drawn, but never captured. This essay gathers twenty-two portraits of Defoe that appeared as frontispieces, illustrations or satires during and after his lifetime by fourteen artists and engravers. Each of these portraits may be considered a “version” of Defoe: a construction of the public identity of an author whose security and reputation depended on his anonymity. Their truth lies in the complex historical conditions that produced them. Two strains in particular—the versions of Defoe created by Michael van der Gucht in 1706 and by George Bickham in 1710—are shown to be the sources of many derivative portraits in Britain and France through the nineteenth century. Defoe’s practice of concealing while revealing his identity informed his authorship of fictions such as Robinson Crusoe, in which his earlier portraits in wigs and cloaks are parodied by the frontispiece of a bearded, barefoot author in goatskins and cap. The final version of Defoe in this study is the frontispiece drawn by Eugène Devéria for an edition of Robinson Crusoe that was published in Paris in 1836, in which Defoe, dressed as a gentleman with a full wig and walking stick, stands by the seashore in a pose that replicates that of his most famous fictional character.
Recommended Citation
Sill, Geoffrey
(2025)
"Versions of Defoe: Frontispiece Portraits of the Author,"
Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe and His Contemporaries: Vol. 16, Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70213/1948-1802.1109
Available at:
https://cedar.wwu.edu/digitaldefoe/vol16/iss1/2
DOI
10.70213/1948-1802.1109
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Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Type
Text