On the attribution of novels to Daniel Defoe

DID DEFOE WRITE MOLL FLANDERS AND ROXANA?" asks Ashley Marshall, in an acute and well-reasoned essay in the present issue of Philological Quarterly. It is a good question, and--maybe rightly?--Marshall thinks the answer we give about these famous novels in our writings about the attribution of works to Defoe is not satisfactory. We present these works as having a secure place in the Defoe canon, even though the evidence we bring forward for his authorship of them is, by our own admission, somewhat problematical. In Marshall's view, since no good case has ever been put forward, they cannot be regarded as "definitively" by Defoe. Scholars, including ourselves, ought to face up to this problem, and should in future present these novels as only "dubiously attributed to Defoe, and preferably with special emphasis on the uncertainty."