The Life of Daniel Defoe
A Critical Biography
Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies Series

The Life of Daniel Defoe examines the entire range of Defoe?s writing in the context of what is known about his life and opinions.

• Features extended and detailed commentaries on Defoe?s political, religious, moral, and economic journalism, as well as on all of his narrative fictions, including Robinson Crusoe
• Places emphasis on Defoe?s distinctive style and rhetoric
• Situates his work within the precise historical circumstances of the eighteenth-century in which Defoe was an important and active participant
• Now available in paperback

Acknowledgments x

1 Dissenter, Merchant, Speculator,Writer 1

2 Early Writings 1697–1703: Projects, Dissent, Poems 31

3 Political Journalism: 1697–1710 70

4 Political Agent and Journalist: Queen Anne to the Hanoverians 113

5 Moral, Social, and Economic Writings 1714–31 143

6 Robinson Crusoe 174

7 Travel, Politics, and Adventure 213

8 Crime and Narrative 234

9 Roxana: A Novel of Crime and Punishment 268

10 History, Facts, and Literature 301

11 Political Journalist and Moral Censor: 1715–31 337

Notes 362

Bibliography 390

Index 395

John Richetti is A.M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written extensively on the eighteenth-century English novel and eighteenth-century philosophical prose, including The English Novel in History: 1700–1780 (1999), Philosophical Writing: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (1983), Defoe’s Narratives (1975), and Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739 (1969). He has edited Robinson Crusoe (2003), among other titles.