photo #8198959

#OnThisDay April 24, 1731: Daniel Defoe, English writer, journalist, and satirist, is found dead while in hiding from creditors. Best known for Robinson Crusoe (1719) — often considered one of the first English novels — and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Defoe wrote from a Puritan non-conformist perspective, shaped by a lifetime of political, religious, and financial turmoil. His writings often reflected themes of survival, repentance, and Providence. Defoe’s death, likely from a stroke, occurred in London, but because he had been living under assumed names to evade debtors, the exact date is uncertain. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, a well-known Dissenter cemetery.