Who Wrote What?: The Question of Attribution 3

Who Wrote What?: The Question of Attribution 3 Whence the Defoe Canon? P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens Maximillian E. Novak, in his onslaught on us ("Whither the Defoe Canon?") in the October 1996 issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, certainly does not pull his punches, and it will look craven if we do not give him one or two back—though a "Forum" may not really be the place for fist-fights. Our The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe, says Novak, was a "power move"; we "attempted to discredit all [all?] of the ascriptions on the grounds that none of those who had come before were such good scholars"; we write as if we were "pronouncing the final word on the canon" (p. 89). Most unkind; and surely rather uncalled for, seeing that we are in the habit of saying that a given anonymous work could perfectly well be by Defoe, but since, so far as we know, no one has yet come up with a good reason (or any reason) for supposing so, it can hardly have a rightful place in the canon. This is what we actually said about the tract, The Royal Progress (1724), on which he challenges us: we wrote "Until a case has been made for the ascription, it will be best to discount it." Admittedly, in this particular case we said it rather brusquely, but we are not usually brusque— rather mild, if anything. Of another pamphlet mentioned by Novak, The True and Genuine Account ofthe Late Jonathan Wild (1725), we wrote: "Altogether, though it would not be absurd to attribute this to Defoe, there hardly seems sufficient grounds for doing so." No "pronouncing the final word on the canon" there. Novak encourages a hypothetical doctoral student who is convinced that Defoe wrote this Jonathan Wild tract not to let doubts creep into his or her mind. But is this truly responsible advice to someone at such a vulnerable moment of his or her career? Ought he not, on the contrary, to be urging the student to let EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 9, Number 2, January 1997 224 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION doubt rage, to treat the matter as a scholarly challenge—perhaps try to trace the history of the attribution? If the student did so, he or she would find things worth pondering. The tract was first attributed to Defoe by William Lee, who, there is good reason to believe, had never even seen a copy, ascribing it purely on the basis of his theory, or fantasy, that Defoe was the publisher John Applebee's hired crime reporter. "Defoe scholars have considered it [the Jonathan Wild tract] to be by Defoe for well over a century," writes Novak (p. 91). Very true; but give a thought to those scholars. If it were true that we claimed that "none of those who have come before us were as good scholars as ourselves," we would certainly be in the great tradition of Defoe scholarship. Walter Wilson regarded George Chalmers's materials as "much too scanty," William Lee thought Wilson blinded by prejudice, W.P. Trent considered Lee gullible and inaccurate, and J.R. Moore entertained the lowest opinion of Trent's methods. Not much calm scholarly consensus and unshakeable authority there. Of course, it may be argued that we should trust such ascriptions as these scholars agreed to pass on one to the other; but then what about those 140-odd new attributions made by Moore? They have not been about for "well over a century." They have not yet acquired a patina of age, and we are trying to take action before they do so.1 Let us return to that Royal Progress. We wrote that we were waiting for someone to make a case for the ascription, and now Novak has done so. But is it a good case? The tract, says Novak, eulogizes Gustavus Adolphus ("in terms similar to other passages by Defoe on that monarch"). It praises William III, at a time when not so many people were doing so. It is a tract which "had to be written by someone involved in a survey of England at the time" (p. 90...