[Gutenberg 7779] • Of Captain Mission

"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. 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." -- Maximillian E. Novak, University of Michigan