P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens reply to Maximillian E. Novak

Forum Response of P.N. Furbank and W.R. Owens to Maximillian E. Novak's review of The Canonisation ofDaniel Defoe in Eighteenth-Century Fiction , 1, pp. 147-49. In his review of our book, The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe, Maximillian Novak quotes a remark of ours to the effect that, though "instinct tells us" that Memoirs of a Cavalier is a work by Defoe, if external evidence were to turn up showing it was by another author, we should "shrug our shoulders and tell ourselves that instinct is not always to be trusted." He asks: "Would they preserve the same air of tolerance were they to substitute Roxana or A Journal ofthe Plague YearT We should like to answer his question, which is a pertinent one. Actually our remark was carelessly phrased, and we ought to have written: "Instinct, supported by a modicum of external evidence," the external evidence being that the rascally Francis Noble published Memoirs of a Cavalier as by Defoe in 1784. This does not really affect our point, however. If—which is by no means unimaginable—strong external evidence were to be discovered suggesting that Memoirs of a Cavalier were by some other author (and other names were canvassed during the eighteenth century), we would presumably have to consider it with an open mind and, if the balance of probabilities seemed to tip that way, to give up the idea of Defoe's authorship. ("Tolerance" hardly comes into the matter.) But, to answer Professor Novak's question: if the attribution of Memoirs of a Cavalier were to be shaken or overturned in this way, we certainly would feel it our duty then to reconsider the authorship of Roxana (for which Francis Noble's edition of 1785 again seems to be the first piece of external evidence). A Journal of the Plague Year is in a different situation, for it appears in a list drawn up by Theophilus Cibber (or Robert Shiels) in Lives of the Poets (1753), that is to say thirty years earlier. The degree of caution or scepticism one brings EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 1, Number 3, April 1989 240 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION to a Defoe attribution must, we feel, increase in proportion to its distance in time from Defoe's own day; and what our book is mainly concerned to question is the bold (overbold?) practice of making new Defoe attributions a century or two centuries after his death. One or two other points in the review are worth commenting on. We are puzzled by what is said about our fondness for the word "plausible." In case of any confusion, we should like to make it plain that throughout our book we argue that mere "plausibility" is not an adequate reason for accepting a new Defoe attribution. Professor Novak speaks of The History of the Wars of Charles XH as having been ascribed to Defoe by "all of his previous bibliographers." This is not the case. The attribution was first made by William Lee in 1869 and is not to be found in the earlier lists by George Chalmers and Walter Wilson. On a more general matter: Professor Novak reassures his readers that "no critic of fiction need worry too much" about our book. We would point out, against this, that Defoe critics over the last thirty years or so have made it their practice to draw inferences about Defoe as novelist not just from the novels but from the whole range of non-fictional writing attributed to him. It is an excellent practice, and Professor Novak may be said to have led the way in it. But this being so, it surely ought to worry critics of the fiction a good deal if they were to find out that they had been drawing on books which Defoe did not write? Finally, we confess we are disappointed that Professor Novak does not explain why he cannot accept the case, often a fairly detailed one and involving much more than style alone, that we make against various attributions of John Robert Moore. It constitutes, in a sense, the heart of our book. P.N. Furbank W.R. Owens The Open University ...