Article: Dating the Devil: Daniel Defoe's Roxana and The Political History of the Devil.(Critical Essay)

In 1724 Daniel Defoe published his last novel, Roxana, and began writing works on the occult, including The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magic (1726), and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). Maximillian E. Novak has suggested that the meager financial success of Roxana may have led Defoe to abandon fiction (Daniel Defoe 624) and then turn his attention to answering contemporary attacks on orthodox Christianity and the Bible ("Defoe" 94). The shift from novels to treatises appears rather decisive, but critics have suggested possible links between Defoe's novels and his work on the occult. In the view of Richard Titlebaum, ...

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