The Afterlife of Daniel Defoe's Captain Singleton in the Seven Years' War.

The article examines the largely overlooked 1757 rewritten edition of Daniel Defoe's 1720 pirate novel *Captain Singleton*, highlighting how it was adapted amid the early Seven Years' War to address British national anxieties about naval performance, leadership, and masculinity. In this version, the protagonist transforms from a stateless rogue into a patriotic privateer aligned with British imperial and sentimental ideals, reflecting mid-eighteenth-century shifts from picaresque individualism to sociable, moralized fiction. The revision softens depictions of African characters and colonial violence, emphasizes loyalty to Britain, and concludes with multiple marriages and reintegration into respectable society, contrasting with the original's more ambiguous and morally complex narrative. This case illustrates how eighteenth-century novels were frequently rewritten to suit changing political contexts, literary tastes, and imperial agendas, revealing the dynamic afterlives of early fiction.