The Attribution of A Vindication of the Press to Daniel Defoe

The A ttribution o fzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA A Vindication of the Press to D aniel D efoe L A U R A A . C U R T IS A i V indication o f the P ress, a thirty-six-page pamphlet published in 1718, was first attributed to Daniel Defoe by William Trent in the twenti­ eth century. Other Defoe bibliographers followed Trent’s lead, and in 1951 the Augustan Reprint Society published a facsimile reprint edited by Otho Clinton Williams. In 1974, W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank used A V indication as an example of their argument that the Defoe canon, including over 500 items according to John Robert Moore, Defoe’s leading twentieth-century bibliographer, “rests on somewhat shakier foundations than most others.”1 At an April 1987 ASECS panel in Cincinnati, Maximillian E. Novak disagreed with Furbank and Owens, presenting a case for Defoe’s authorship of A V indication. Fur­ bank and Owens at that same panel stressed their reservations about internal evidence in making attributions of anonymous writings: “We ourselves . . . would not be inclined to regard even very strong internal evidence as decisive grounds for making a positive attribution in the absence of any shred of external evidence.”2 What external evidence do we have for attributing A V indication o f the P ress to Daniel Defoe? In contesting the attribution, Furbank and Owens nevertheless mention the Defoe identification in an eighteenthcentury hand seen by William Trent on a copy of the pamphlet.3 In affirming the attribution, Novak adds to the account of external evi433 4 3 4 / zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFED c u r t is dence an advertisement referred to by Trent and the consensus of six twentieth-century Defoe authorities.4 But the advertisement referred to by Trent5 lists only the contents of the March 1718 ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA P olitical State o f G reat B ritain (Abel Boyer); the Bangorian controversy, about which Defoe wrote, and to which allusions are made in A V indication o f the P ress, is mentioned yet there is nothing about A V indication.6 And as far as Novak’s six Defoe authorities are concerned, one of them, Otho Clinton Williams, who actually wrote an introduction to the pamphlet, makes it clear that he is relying upon Trent’s ascription, so that, in effect, we might infer that the other five authorities were doing exactly the same thing. Nevertheless, I believe that Professor Novak has made an important point about the credence to be accorded to previous Defoe authorities on the perplexing issue of Defoe attributions. Lacking external evidence for many works with which he has been credited, we must have recourse to internal evidence: repetitions of idiosyncratic ideas, reference to external events that figure in Defoe’s biography, and characteristic styles of writ­ ing. In such a procedure, the testimony of previous Defoe experts acquires more weight than it would ordinarily, and therefore one is forced to judge which experts one can trust and to evaluate in which areas they can be trusted. My own impression from research done while working on Defoe is that William Trent was a better critic than was John Robert Moore, whose scholarship was his strong point, and that there­ fore Trent’s statements in a letter to Joel Spingarn of February 21, 1909, “ . . . I am very sure that was my Defoe. ... I have made a careful analysis of it and think that it is certainly Defoe’s”7 are to be accorded a good deal of respect. Bearing in mind, however, Rodney Baine’s warning that “Defoe scholars must . . . recognize the large area of uncertainty — the scores of items which may have been written by Defoe but for which there is quite inadequate evidence to constitute certitude,”8 I would place A V indica­ tion o f the P ress in this area of uncertainty. On the basis of biography, ideas, and style, I would speculate that the pamphlet belongs to the category Defoe refers to in M ercurius P oliticus of July 1717 as one which he “had [a] Hand in.”91 believe that a careful reading of A V indication o f the P ress reveals...