Defoe's style is clear, simple, and natural. He wrote several other works,
of which few are now read. Among these are the _Account of the Plague, The
Life and Piracies of Captain Singleton_, and _The Fortunes and Misfortunes
of Moll Flanders_. He died on the 24th of April, 1731.
RICHARDSON.--Samuel Richardson, who, notwithstanding the peculiar merits
of Defoe, must be called the _Father of Modern Prose Fiction_, was born in
Derbyshire, in 1689. The personal events of his life are few and
uninteresting. A carpenter's son, he had but little schooling, and owed
everything to his own exertions. Apprenticed to a printer in London, at
the age of fifteen, he labored assiduously at his trade, and it rewarded
him with fortune: he became, in turn, printer of the Journals of the House
of Commons, Master of the Stationers' Company, and Printer to the King.
While young, he had been the confidant of three young women, and had
written or corrected their love-letters for them. He seems to have had
great fluency in letter-writing; and being solicited by a publisher to
write a series of familiar letters on the principal concerns of life,
which might be used as models,--a sort of "Easy Letter-Writer,"--he began
the task, but, changing his plan, he wrote a story in a series of letters.
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