Alien Come Home: The Story of Daniel Defoe’s Missing Years, 1644–1680 by John Martin (review)

228 for the world. In contrast to the openendedness of the larger narrative, Yorick himself comes to a sudden, definitive end, visually symbolized by the solid black page. And it is in the parson’s death—which ‘‘substitutes the theatrics of tender gestures to the discharge of satirical volleys’’—that Sterne arrives at the comic mode that will serve him for the rest of the novel. As skillful as Mr. Martinez is at drawing the ‘‘fine line’’ that separates the many comic terms in his title, the essay unconvincingly dismisses sentimentality. Avoiding ‘‘the acrid hostility of satire,’’ Mr. Martinez posits, without fully defending the claim, that ‘‘humour’’ should not ‘‘lapse into its antithesis and impose an emphasis on the heart.’’ But such a flaw does not undermine his central argument, and his essay deserves a place in the longraging debates over Tristram Shandy’s generic identity. This Shandean also contains two essays that are part of the ongoing enterprise of cataloguing and making sense of illustrations, prints, and decorative objects based on Sterne and his characters . Brigitte Friant-Kessler’s ‘‘Laughat -able Matter Re-ordered: Illustrated Sterne and Satirical Prints (I)’’ focuses on satirical appropriations of Sterne’s characters, including a series that depicts Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, as Uncle Toby sitting in his privy-like sentry box after the defeat of his bill to fortify the dockyards in 1786, and such burlesques as ‘‘The Siege of Bergem op Zoom,’’ a Bunburyesque print that features Toby and Trim engaged in an indoor mock battle with broomsticks, a barking spaniel, and a precariously balanced musket connected by a string to Toby’s coat. W. B. Gerard and Brigitte Friant-Kessler’s ‘‘Towards a Catalogue of Illustrated Laurence Sterne: Decorative Arts,’’ the fourth of five installments, includes mass-produced items such as basalt teapots and silkworks, Wedgewood candlesticks and vases. By far the most frequently reproduced image here is a sentimental portrait of Maria with her dog Sylvio . These varied images will interest Sterneans and students of eighteenthcentury visual and material culture. Brian Michael Norton California State University, Fullerton JOHN MARTIN. Alien Come Home: The Story of Daniel Defoe’s Missing Years, 1644–1680. UK: Authors Online for Anglia Publishers, 2009. Pp. xiv ⫹ 97.£9.99; $15.95. Visitors to the website of Anglia Publishers are greeted with the jaunty invitation , ‘‘Publish with us at an affordable fee. Be promoted and marketed. Imagine . . . your name on the cover of your own attractive book.’’ That slogan fairly well tells the story of this self-published and self-referential book. It was not vetted by other Defoe scholars, nor does it appear to have benefitted from the services of an editor or proofreader. Of its 62 notes, a quarter refer either to Mr. Martin’s earlier (also self-published) book on Defoe (Beyond Belief, 2006) or to Defoe’s Early Life (1981) by Frank Bastian. Like Bastian, but far surpassing him in audacity, Mr. Martin draws inferences about Defoe’s early life from his works. If Defoe wrote Moll Flanders from the viewpoint of a woman who had committed incest, then he also must have been a homosexual who committed incest with his sister (do not ask). This sister, Mary Foe (but they both went by the name of King), bore him two chil- 229 dren, after which he accompanied William Penn on ‘‘a version of the Grand Tour’’ on which he killed a man in Paris, requiring him to conceal his identity when he returned to London, which is why we have no record of any of it. However, Defoe did use the adventure as the basis for Captain Singleton. William the Quaker/Penn bought Daniel/ Captain Bob’s silence by giving him a tract of land in America, where he lived with his sister for nine years, off and on, and was pursued by a young girl named Elizabeth White whom he had slept with, which provided him with the germ of Roxana. How did Defoe have time for all these escapades? Ah well, he was born not in 1660, as all previous biographers believed , but in 1644, based on parish records of the birth of a son to Daniel...