DEFOE DE-ATTRIBUTIONS: Critique of J.R.Moore's Checklist

Daniel Defoe is one of the most important and best-known writers from the 18th century but there is a feeling among scholars that the Defoe "canon" is a strange and not very satisfactory construction. Between 1790, when the first bibliography of Defoe appeared, and 1971, when J.R. Moore published the second edition of his "Checklist", the canon had swollen from just over a 100 items to 570. A large proportion of these attributions had been made in the 19th and 20th centuries, on the basis of features of style, "favourite phrases" and resemblance to Defoe's known views. This volume is a list of all the items in Moore's "Checklist" that at present the authors consider questionable, with in each case a note as to who was the first attributor, a brief synopsis and an explanation of the reasons for doubting the ascription.