Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_




INTRODUCTION


Defoe has been recognized as the author of _A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates_ since 1932 when
John Robert Moore suggested that the supposed author, Captain Charles
Johnson, like Andrew Moreton, Kara Selym or Captain Roberts, was merely
another mask for the creator of _Robinson Crusoe_. Although most of the
first volume is of minor literary importance, the second section which
appeared in 1728 as _The History of the Pyrates_ commenced with a life
"Of Captain Misson and His Crew," one of Defoe's most remarkable and
neglected works of fiction. In much the same manner and at the same time
that John Gay was satirizing Walpole's government in _The Beggar's
Opera_, Defoe began to use his pirates as a commentary on the injustice
and hypocrisy of contemporary English society. Among Defoe's gallery of
pirates are Captain White, who refused to rob from women and children;
Captain Bellamy, the proletarian revolutionist; and captain North, whose
sense of justice and honesty was a rebuke to the corruption of
government under Walpole. But the fictional Captain Misson, the founder
of a communist utopia, is by far the most original of these creations.

If we were to accept the view of nineteenth-century critics, that Defoe
was one of the earliest exponents of _laissez faire_, his creation of a
communist utopia would seem remarkable indeed. But paradoxes fascinated