The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Vindication of the Press, by Daniel Defoe

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Title: A Vindication of the Press

Author: Daniel Defoe

Release Date: November 18, 2004 [EBook #14084]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A VINDICATION OF THE PRESS ***

Produced by David Starner, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg
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The Augustan Reprint Society

Daniel Defoe

_A Vindication of the Press_ (1718)

With an Introduction by Otho Clinton Williams

Publication Number 29

Los Angeles

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

University of California

1951

_GENERAL EDITORS_

H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_

RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_

EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_

JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_

_ASSISTANT EDITOR_

W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_

_ADVISORY EDITORS_

EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_

BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_

LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_

CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_

JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_

ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_

LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_

SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_

ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_

JAMES SUTHERLAND, _Queen Mary College, London_

H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_

INTRODUCTION

_A Vindication of the Press_ is one of Defoe's most characteristic
pamphlets and for this reason as well as for its rarity deserves
reprinting. Besides the New York Public Library copy, here reproduced,
I know of but one copy, which is in the Indiana University Library.
Neither the Bodleian nor the British Museum has a copy.

Like many items in the Defoe canon, this tract must be assigned to him
on the basis of internal evidence; but this evidence, though
circumstantial, is convincing. W.P. Trent included _A Vindication_ in
his bibliography of Defoe in the _CHEL_, and later bibliographers of
Defoe have followed him in ac