{"product_id":"2940013649651","title":"The Life Adventures \u0026 Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton","description":"PREFACE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat all Defoe's novels, with the exception of \"Robinson Crusoe,\" should\u003cbr\u003ehave been covered with the dust of neglect for many generations, is a plain\u003cbr\u003eproof of how much fashions in taste affect the popularity of the British\u003cbr\u003eclassics. It is true that three generations or so ago, Defoe's works were\u003cbr\u003eedited by both Sir Walter Scott and Hazlitt, and that this masterly piece\u003cbr\u003eof realism, \"Captain Singleton,\" was reprinted a few years back in \"The\u003cbr\u003eCamelot Classics,\" but it is safe to say that out of every thousand readers\u003cbr\u003eof \"Robinson Crusoe\" only one or two will have even heard of the \"Memoirs\u003cbr\u003eof a Cavalier,\" \"Colonel Jack,\" \"Moll Flanders,\" or \"Captain Singleton.\" It\u003cbr\u003eis indeed distressing to think that while many scores of thousands of\u003cbr\u003ecopies of Lord Lytton's flashy romance, \"Paul Clifford,\" have been devoured\u003cbr\u003eby the public, \"Captain Singleton\" has remained unread and almost\u003cbr\u003eforgotten. But the explanation is simple. Defoe's plain and homely realism\u003cbr\u003esoon grew to be thought vulgar by people who themselves aspired to be\u003cbr\u003erefined and genteel. The rapid spread of popular education, in the middle\u003cbr\u003eof last century, was responsible for a great many aberrations of taste, and\u003cbr\u003ethe works of the two most English of Englishmen, Defoe and Hogarth, were\u003cbr\u003ejudged to be hardly fitting for polite society, as we may see from Lamb's\u003cbr\u003eEssay on Hogarth, and from an early edition of Chambers's \"Cyclopaedia of\u003cbr\u003eEnglish Literature\" (1843), where we are told: \"Nor is it needful to show\u003cbr\u003ehow elegant and reflective literature, especially, tends to moralise, to\u003cbr\u003esoften, and to adorn the soul and life of man.\" \"Unfortunately the taste or\u003cbr\u003e_circumstances of Defoe led him mostly into low life_, and his characters\u003cbr\u003eare such _as we cannot sympathise with_. The whole arcana of roguery\u003cbr\u003eand villany seems to have been open to him.... It might be thought that the\u003cbr\u003egood taste which led Defoe to write in a style of such pure and\u003cbr\u003eunpretending English, instead of the inflated manner of vulgar writers,\u003cbr\u003e_would have dictated a more careful selection of his subjects_, and\u003cbr\u003ekept him from wandering so frequently into the low and disgusting purlieus\u003cbr\u003eof vice. But this moral and tasteful discrimination seems to have been\u003cbr\u003ewholly wanting,\" \u0026amp;c. The 'forties were the days when critics still talked\u003cbr\u003elearnedly of the \"noble style,\" \u0026amp;c., \"the vulgar,\" of \"sinking\" or \"rising\"\u003cbr\u003ewith \"the subject,\" the days when Books of Beauty were in fashion, and\u003cbr\u003eRembrandt's choice of beggars, wrinkled faces and grey hairs, for his\u003cbr\u003efavourite subjects seemed a low and reprehensible taste in \"high art.\"\u003cbr\u003eThough critics to-day still ingenuously confound an artist's subject with\u003cbr\u003ehis treatment of it, and prefer scenes of life to be idealised rather than\u003cbr\u003erealised by writers, we have advanced a little since the days of the poet\u003cbr\u003eMontgomery, and it would be difficult now to find anybody writing so\u003cbr\u003econfidently--\"Unfortunately the taste or circumstances of Defoe led him\u003cbr\u003emostly into low life,\" however much the critic might believe it. But let us\u003cbr\u003eglance at a few passages in \"Captain Singleton,\" which may show us why\u003cbr\u003eDefoe excels as a realist, and why his descriptions of \"low life\" are\u003cbr\u003eartistically as perfect as any descriptions of \"higher life\" in the works\u003cbr\u003eof the English novelists. Take the following description of kidnapping:--","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47163554234608,"sku":"2940013649651","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013649651_p0.jpg?v=1763596495","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013649651","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}