Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business: Or, Private Abuses, Public Grievances Exemplified is a 1725 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. [1] It deals with the "exorbitant Wages of our Women, Servants, Footmen". [2] Similarly to The Protestant Monastery (1726), Parochial Tyranny (1727), Augusta Triumphans (1728) and Second Thoughts are Best (1729), it was published under the pseudonym of Andrew Moreton. [1] Defoe did not sign his name to the majority of his works. [3] He preferred them to be published anonymously or under one of his pen names. [3] This choice was “sometimes” made “to conceal his authorship or to stimulate sales, but more characteristically to establish a point of view”. [3]
Daniel Defoe was an English novelist, journalist, merchant, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its number of translations. He has been seen as one of the earliest proponents of the English novel, and helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Aphra Behn and Samuel Richardson. Defoe wrote many political tracts, was often in trouble with the authorities, and spent a period in prison. Intellectuals and political leaders paid attention to his fresh ideas and sometimes consulted him.
Robinson Crusoe is an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. Written with a combination of Epistolary, confessional, and didactic forms, the book follows the title character after he is cast away and spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Pedro Serrano is another real-life castaway whose story might have inspired the novel.
Johns Hopkins was an American merchant, investor, and philanthropist. Born on a plantation, he left his home to start a career at the age of 17, and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he remained for most of his life.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1715.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762.
John Robert Moore (1890–1973) was an American biographer and bibliographer of Daniel Defoe.
George Cadbury was an English Quaker businessman and social reformer who expanded his father's Cadbury's cocoa and chocolate company in Britain.
James Cardinal Gibbons was an American Catholic prelate who served as Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina from 1868 to 1872, Bishop of Richmond from 1872 to 1877, and as Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death.
Elizabeth Singer Rowe was an English poet, essayist and fiction writer called "the ornament of her sex and age" and the "Heavenly Singer". She was among 18th-century England's most widely read authors. She wrote mainly religious poetry, but her best-known work, Friendship in Death (1728), is a Jansenist miscellany of imaginary letters from the dead to the living. Despite a posthumous reputation as a pious, bereaved recluse, Rowe corresponded widely and was involved in local concerns at Frome in her native Somerset. She remained popular into the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic and in translation. Though little read today, scholars have called her stylistically and thematically radical for her time.
In 1802, during a trip to Washington, DC, Miami Chief Little Turtle extended an invitation to the Baltimore area Quakers to visit Fort Wayne and teach the Miami about white civilization and European cultivation methods. The Quakers sent farm implements in 1803. Little Turtle, by way of William Wells, sent a letter thanking them for the tools, but expressed uncertainty of how they should be used.
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church is a pamphlet written by Daniel Defoe, first published anonymously in 1702. Defoe was prompted to write the pamphlet by the increased hostility towards Dissenters in the wake of the accession of Queen Anne to the throne.
Second Thoughts Are Best: or, a Further Improvement of a Late Scheme to Prevent Street Robberies is a 1729 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. He wrote it under the name of Andrew Moreton Esq., presented as a dissatisfied middle-class old man who was extremely concerned about the increase in criminality around the 1720s.
Augusta Triumphans: or, the Way to Make London the Most Flourishing City in the Universe by Daniel Defoe was first published on 16 March 1728. The fictitious speaker of this pamphlet, Andrew Moreton, is a man in his sixties who offers suggestions for the improvement of London. In particular, he fosters the establishment of a university, an academy of music, a hospital for foundlings and licensed institutions for the treatment of mental diseases. Moreover, he encourages the introduction of measures to prevent moral corruption and street robbery.
Andrew Moreton is a pseudonym used by Daniel Defoe in several pamphlets published between 1725 and 1729, proposing some new reflections on themes already discussed in Defoe's 1697 An essay upon projects. Moreton is presented as a crotchety middle-class old gentleman complaining about the indecency of London social life in the latest years. Fulfilling his duty as an honest and concerned citizen, Moreton firmly advances possible reforms in order to improve the quality of life of all social classes.
Parochial Tyranny: Or, the House-Keeper's Complaint Against the Insupportable Exactions, and Partial Assessments of Select Vestries, &C is a 1727 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. It deals with the corruption of parishes. Similarly to Every-body's Business, Is No-body's Business (1725), The Protestant Monastery (1726), Augusta Triumphans (1728) and Second Thoughts are Best (1729), it was published under the pseudonym of Andrew Moreton. Defoe did not sign his name to the majority of his works. He preferred them to be published anonymously or under one of his pen names. This choice was “sometimes” made “to conceal his authorship or to stimulate sales, but more characteristically to establish a point of view”.
The Protestant Monastery: or, a Complaint against the Brutality of the Present Age is a 1726 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. It focuses on contemporary disrespect towards elders. Similarly to Every-body's Business, Is No-body's Business (1725), Parochial Tyranny (1727), Augusta Triumphans (1728) and Second Thoughts are Best (1729), it was published under the pseudonym of Andrew Moreton. Defoe did not sign his name to the majority of his works. He preferred them to be published anonymously or under one of his pen names. This choice was "sometimes" made "to conceal his authorship or to stimulate sales, but more characteristically to establish a point of view".
An Essay Upon Projects (1697) was the first volume published by Daniel Defoe. It begins with an introduction containing a portrait of his time as a "Projecting Age", and subsequently illustrates plans for the economic and social improvement of England, including an early proposal for a national insurance scheme.
The Great Law of Subordination Consider'd; Or, the Insolence and Unsufferable Behaviour of SERVANTS in England Duly Enquired is a 1724 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. Similarly to Every-body's Business, Is No-body's Business (1725), it focuses on issues related to servants. It also revises themes which its author had already dealt with in An Essay Upon Projects (1697).
Gerard Thomas Hopkins was an American businessman, Quaker religious leader, and uncle to philanthropist Johns Hopkins. Gerard Thomas Hopkins was born on October 24, 1769, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland to Elizabeth Thomas and Johns Hopkins, Senior. On April 16, 1796, at the age of 26, Hopkins married Dorothy Brooke at the Sandy Spring Meeting House in Frederick, Maryland. The couple would go on to have eight children: Mary, Deborah, Elizabeth, Thomas, William, Gerard, Jr., Margaret, and Rachel. Eventually, they moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where Gerard opened his wholesale grocery business and became clerk of the Meeting of the Society of Friends at Baltimore for the Western Shore of Maryland and the adjacent parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Backscheider, P B, Daniel Defoe.His Life, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1989.
“Social Projects”, Daniel Defoe. The Collection of the Lily Library,Indiana University Bloomington, 2008, retrieved 25 October 2015, <http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/defoe/projects.html>
George, M D, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1979.
Maldonado, T, “Defoe and the ‘Projecting Age’”,MIT Press, vol. 18, no. 1, 2002, pp. 78-85, retrieved 20 October 2015, JSTOR, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1512032>
Moore, J R, "Defoe's Persona as Author: The Quaker's Sermon", SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 507-516, retrieved 20 November 2015, JSTOR, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/449910>
Novak, M E, “Last Productive Years”,Daniel Defoe Master of Fictions. His Life and Ideas, Oxford University Press, United States of America, 2001.