Defoe's Persona as Author: The Quaker's Sermon

The Quaker's Sermon: Or, A Holding-Forth Concerning Barabbas (1711) is a previously unrecognized tract by Defoe. It is significant as another of his attacks on Dr. Sacheverell, his defenses of the Duke of Marlborough, and his uses of a persona. Defoe rarely signed his name to his writings, but published most of them anonymously or assigned them to any one of eighty-seven different fictitious personalities—sometimes to conceal his authorship or to stimulate sales, but more characteristically to establish a point of view. Here, as in six previously recognized tracts by Defoe, he wrote as a Quaker.