University of Virginia Library

The Evidence from Defoe's Title Pages
by
Rodney M. Baine

Among the misinterpretations from which Daniel Defoe has suffered, some of the most interesting have been due to scholars' ignorance of bibliography. Especially important distortions of his artistry have resulted from their misinterpretations of the title pages of his fiction.

It is delusive to suppose that the title page of a Defoe novel reproduces his own suggested title and especially fallacious to expect that it provides evidence of his original plan. The title page of a first edition was normally set last, as every student of bibliography knows, with the preliminaries. But more important, in the early eighteenth century the title page was still primarily the publisher's advertisement, or bill of fare, especially for popular literature like fiction and rogue biography. In such books especially

the title page is best regarded, as McKerrow noted for books throughout the entire seventeenth century, "not as part of the work to which it is prefixed, or as a production of its author, but rather as an explanatory label affixed to the book by the printer or publisher."[1] The practice of preparing and posting title pages to advertise new books, a practice widespread in the last decades of the seventeenth century, was still in use in Defoe's day. The rubricated title pages for the editions of Defoe's Col. Jack in 1724 and 1738 would indicate that at least these titles were designed to be posted. Since the 1724 title page was prepared by the same syndicate of booksellers that published the first edition, one can assume that the original title page was similarly intended. Publication of Col. Jack by a syndicate of booksellers suggests that the author did not supervise, or perhaps even assist in the publication of his book, apart from contributing a preface. Ordinarily the publishing conger of the early eighteenth century evidently purchased outright the copy of a promising book and proceeded to market it in the most attractive way possible[2] The author was evidently not responsible for seeing the book through the press and often did not bother to correct the errors. It is hardly likely, under such circumstances, that he was responsible for the title page.

Thus the only reliable indication of Defoe's intended title is the neglected head title, which was ordinarily set, in first editions, with the first sheet. As Mr. McKerrow suggests in general for works of the previous century, "we may probably infer that this heading preserves the name that the author originally intended" (p. 91). For Col. Jack the head title is simply "THE LIFE OF Col. JACK, &c." For Moll Flanders it is "THE HISTORY AND MISFORTUNES of the Famous Moll Flanders, &." This is just about all the title which, we can be reasonably sure, owes to Defoe himself. For Defoe's fiction the comparative reliability of the head title is perhaps most vividly exemplified in A Journal of the Plague Year. Both the head title and the running title read "MEMOIRS OF THE PLAGUE," and it is probably by this title that the book should be known.

But the title pages of Defoe's fiction have been used not only to authenticate his venality, but to demonstrate his heedlessness in planning and writing his novels. Such a charge has been levelled especially against Captain Singleton, Col. Jack, and The Fortunate Mistress.

The unjustifiable assumption that the title page would preserve the authors' original plan and would thus help in reconstructing the writing of the novel appears in M. Dottin's remarks concerning Captain Singleton:

"Il était édité par un groupe de libraires, qui, vraisemblablement, avait traité avec De Foe au seul vu du titre et acheté d'avance le manuscrit. . . . Le titre était, selon l'usage du temps, un résumé du contenu du livre."[3] According to M. Dottin, the outlined plan was not actually followed: "En effect, il n'est pas question, dans le titre, de la traversée de l'Afrique: cette idée ne vint sans doute à De Foe que plus tard, en pleine péiode de rédaction" (III, 617, n. 11). Even had the title been written first, M. Dottin's postulation that the title page shows a novel planned without a trip through Africa is difficult to understand when one reads the original title page: Here the title clearly promises a trip into Africa. The real confusion concerns the "Englishman, a Citizen of London," whom Singleton supposedly meets "among the Indians." Singleton does meet an Englishman among the African natives, but he is not identified as a Londoner.[4] Probably the hurried reader who prepared the title page conflated this surprising figure with the Dutchman whom Singleton rescues from the Ceylonese and Robert Knox, whom Singleton does not meet at all, but whose Ceylon adventure is briefly narrated. At any rate, the confusion could hardly have been the author's.

Particularly interesting are the unsubstantiated deductions from the title page of Col. Jack:

Even those who do not recall fully the plot of the novel perceive at once the blunder "married four Wives, and five of them prov'd Whores." The very fact that such a blunder appeared in the first issue should surely have suggested the strong probability that the title page was not the work of the author. Obviously this blunder is probably not a compositor's slip, but the mistake of a reader confused by Jack's remarriage to one of his four wives. But evidently alone among Defoe scholars, Sam Holt Monk was aware that this blunder might not have been Defoe's.[5] To Thomas Wright it was evidence "to show how hastily Defoe's works were written."[6] In a second issue of the first edition the title page was soon corrected to state that Colonel Jack "was Five times married to Four Whores." But the other discrepancies were allowed to stand. In the text Colonel Jack is a thief for six years, not twenty-six. He does not fly with the Chevalier. At the end of the novel he is presented as a sober citizen of London, not an officer serving abroad.

Instead of correcting these inaccuracies, title pages of subsequent editions of the novel added inexactitudes and misrepresentations. For example the "third" (second) edition, of 1724, published by the same "conger," or syndicate of booksellers, made explicit the implication of the original title page, adding that Colonel Jack had "follow'd the Fortunes of the Chevalier de St. George." In 1738, when Defoe was in his grave, John Applebee added the misrepresentation that Jack "was taken at the Preston Rebellion" and specified that he "is now at the Head of his Regiment, in the Service of the Czarina fighting against the Turks." Applebee also added to the title page the attribution "written by the Author of ROBINSON CRUSOE" and signed the Preface "Daniel D'efoe." For this identification he probably had ample evidence: Defoe had begun writing for him in 1720. But for the additions to the title Applebee surely had no authority. Oddly enough the distinguished eighteenth-century scholar George Aitken suggested that the original title page "was revised because it contained a reference to" Colonel Jack's "service in the Czarina's army, 'fighting against the Turks,' a matter which Defoe did not mention in the book, perhaps because he found the story was long enough without it."[7] If Defoe scholars continue to utilize the title pages as evidence of the author's original plans, they should at least quote the titles of the first editions.

The assumption that the author's original plan might be, or was, preserved in the title page has for decades afforded Defoe scholars explanations or examples of Defoe's haste and careless planning. Concerning Col. Jack, Paul Dottin posited, "Après avoir tracé les grandes lignes de son ouvrage De Foe en rédigea le titre, mais, comme d'habitude, sans s'intendire de modifier en cours de route son plan primitif" (III, 688). Regarding an

incident in the text where the hero abstains from complete participation in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, moreover, M. Dottin suggested, "En écrivant ces lignes, De Foe avait évidemment l'intention d'abandonner cet épisode qu'il avait pourtant annoncé dans le titre" (III, 700, n. 14). But from the title page of Col. Jack Mr. John Robert Moore has educed even more interesting conjectures concerning Defoe's alleged changes of plan. The discrepancy between the hero as Jacobite rebel in the title page and grateful supporter of George I in the text, Mr. Moore asserts, is "explained by the fact that the book was planned before Bishop Atterbury's conspiracy was discovered, but published while Atterbury was in the Tower awaiting trial for treason" (Checklist, p. 184). In his biography of Defoe Mr. Moore elaborated upon his theory: One should perhaps hardly bother to point out that at the time of writing Colonel Jack is represented as a citizen of London. The important error is the assumption that Defoe planned the novel as early as 1718, for which no shred of evidence is forthcoming, and that the title page can be relied on to embody Defoe's original plan. Surely we are not asked to believe that Defoe began to plan the novel at the time when Colonel Jack is represented as writing it. But even the late William McBurney, trained though he was in eighteenth-century bibliography, was misled by the evidence of this title page. Citing the original title, he commented, "Defoe seems again to have recalled what may have been his original plan for the work and decided to purge Jacque of his one dishonorable trait—the political indifference and thoughtless toying with treason."[9]

Of all the title pages which introduce Defoe's novels, however, that of his last, The Fortunate Mistress, is the most confusing. Probably Defoe was not responsible for a single word of the subtitle: A History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, afterwards called the Countess de Wintelsheim in Germany, being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana in the Time of Charles II. If Defoe had intended to name his heroine on the title page, he would surely have named her in the novel. On the contrary, as Editor, he explained in the Preface "that it

was necessary to conceal names."[10] Except for the casual information that her daughter Susan was named for her (p. 205), she is named only by her sobriquet, "Roxana." The name "Mademoiselle de Beleau" is probably the publishers' invention; the title "Countess de Wintelsheim in Germany" is almost certainly their error. So far as the novel tells us, Roxana is never in Germany. Her German prince never marries her or takes her there. Her last husband is Dutch, not German, and at the end of the story they are living in the Hague. The second, 1735 edition was entitled simply The Life and Adventures of Roxana, the Fortunate Mistress, or most Unhappy Wife.

But the subtitle also indicates a setting in the time of Charles II. Was Defoe writing so rapidly and carelessly that he had his heroine, born in 1673, dancing, some forty years later, for the courtiers of Charles II? The chronology of the novel itself is fairly consistent. Roxana was brought over to England in 1683, when she was ten years old. She married at fifteen, was deserted by her husband eight years later, and after about a year of destitution she became the mistress of a jeweller for approximately seven years and then of a German prince for eight more. About a year later, about 1712, that is, or somewhat later by other computations, she returned to England. A few years later she became known as Roxana. Her setting as Roxana would then be London in the early reign of George I, not the late reign of Charles II.

Among other evidence, some too intricate to be detailed here, perhaps the most striking proof that Defoe had in mind his own times rather than those of Charles II is the elaborate attention which he gave to Roxana's Turkish costume. When she first performs in it, Roxana describes her attire in detail (p. 174); and when she next dances in it, she again describes it minutely and mentions the oriental costumes of her two visitors. Moreover her daughter Susan continually brings forward this costume as evidence for identifying Roxana as her mother. The emphasis which Defoe gave this attire in the plot thus justifies its selection for the original frontispiece: here Roxana is exhibited in her Turkish costume. Such a costume did not characterize the Restoration stage Roxana, who evidently wore some sort of turban and perhaps a veil, but little authentic to suggest genuinely oriental attire.[11] Roxana's Turkish costume suggests that Defoe expected the alert reader to visualize present time, in the fringes of the court of George I, where Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had recently popularized Turkish dress for women. Doutbless few readers of the novel had seen any of the numerous pictures which Lady Mary had had painted of herself in her Turkish garb, but many had probably seen the satirical engraving of Lady

Mary as "The Female Traveller," where she is dressed in Turkish attire and wears a crucifix.[12] Interestingly enough, Roxana mentions wearing no crucifix, but only her diamond necklace. The crucifix which adorns her in the frontispiece of the novel probably derives from the print of Lady Mary. Very likely, moreover, Lady Mary and her protégée Maria Skerrett suggested Roxana's two visitors who arrive in oriental costumes "by Order of a Noble Person, who, with his Family, had been in Persia" (p. 178). If the title page had not misled us, we would long ago have perceived that the setting of the Roxana scenes is the London of George I.