Beyond Belief: The Real Life of Daniel Defoe

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'Beyond Belief' reveals the real life of a highly talented religious dissenter whose sometimes outwardly pious and 'holier than thou' demeanour disguised another, different existence in the shadows.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Daniel Defoe's chronic compulsion to "re-invent" himself has frustrated novelists for decades. In this study, Martin (history, Trinity Univ.) does not simply update facts and theories published in earlier biographies, most notably James Sutherland's standard, Defoe (1937), but also offers informed, convincing speculations about this mysterious, many-sided father of the English novel. Basing his theories on a careful and exhaustive examination of the records, Martin posits, e.g., that the most commonly accepted components of Defoe's birth and childhood are patently false. After debunking Defoe's illogical claim to have participated in the Monmouth Rebellion, he investigates the novelist's tangled relations with women. His most startling theory is that Defoe was knowingly homosexual since childhood. Martin's speculations on how Defoe's sexuality-so seldom hazarded by other biographers-affected his life is one of the book's most persuasive aspects. Notwithstanding its steep price, its lack of illustrations besides apparently random signatures, and Martin's annoying habit of referring to major figures by their first names, this nonconformist reading of Defoe's life and novels is a breath of fresh air. Recommended for libraries with extensive holdings by and about Defoe.-Charles C. Nash, formerly with Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

The title of this book is apt. Defoe's notoriously opaque life and the uncertainties of his authorship have challenged biographers, and several very good ones have taken up that challenge. J. Paul Hunter, Paula Backscheider, and Maximillian Novak all worked diligently at the puzzles Defoe presents. Martin takes a different approach. Where facts do not exist, he speculates. Where actual conversations are not extant, he invents them. He subscribes to the notion that one can know Defoe through his novels, if not from history. Thus "Daniel/Robinson" or "Moll/Daniel" or "Roxanna/Daniel" becomes the source of conjecture about Defoe's life and thoughts. Martin assures the reader that Defoe was homosexual because he would have had to be to understand Moll Flanders and Roxanna so well. A 1727 pamphlet, "Conjugal Lewdness: Or Matrimonial Whoredom," becomes evidence that Defoe was a child molester, and that in turn leads to the conclusion that Defoe was himself molested as a child. The book is often entertaining and lively, but it is fiction not biography. Summing Up: Not recommended. H. Benoist Our Lady of the Lake University of San Antonio

Booklist Review

"To biographers, Defoe, father of the modern novel, is the most enticing English literary figure next to Shakespeare. Plenty of documentation of him has been found but doesn't help much with persistent questions: Why did he move around so much? Why did he have constant money troubles? Why is he almost completely mum about his own life? Martin, who like his subject is both businessman and novelist, believes such questions can be answered if one presumes not that Defoe was fearfully hiding youthful participation in Monmouth's rebellion, as other biographers have thought, but that Defoe was a cross-dressing homosexual. Martin admits to speculating but thinks Defoe becomes clearer if his clandestine sexual identity and the blackmail it laid him open to are considered plausible and inferentially investigated. The major clues Martin follows up are Defoe's less-than-cozy marriages; his long, intense relationships with certain men; his novels' protagonist-narrators' personalities and doings; and the curious ways he went through money. Professional scholars may pooh-pooh Martin's exercise. Those hooked by Defoe's fundamental elusiveness may be spellbound."--"Olson, Ray" Copyright 2007 Booklist