

Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                       CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

                                * * * * *





                                    AN
                           ESSAY UPON PROJECTS.


                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                              DANIEL DEFOE.

                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]

                       CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
                                   1887




INTRODUCTION.


DEFOE’S “Essay on Projects” was the first volume he published, and no
great writer ever published a first book more characteristic in
expression of his tone of thought.  It is practical in the highest
degree, while running over with fresh speculation that seeks everywhere
the well-being of society by growth of material and moral power.  There
is a wonderful fertility of mind, and almost whimsical precision of
detail, with good sense and good humour to form the groundwork of a happy
English style.  Defoe in this book ran again and again into sound
suggestions that first came to be realised long after he was dead.  Upon
one subject, indeed, the education of women, we have only just now caught
him up.  Defoe wrote the book in 1692 or 1693, when his age was a year or
two over thirty, and he published it in 1697.

Defoe was the son of James Foe, of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, whose family
had owned grazing land in the country, and who himself throve as a meat
salesman in London.  James Foe went to Cripplegate Church, where the
minister was Dr. Annesley.  But in