The Life and Strange, Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe

A story as good as one of Defoe's own novels, full of immediacy, action and good sense ... We can look the great biographers Macaulay and Trevelyan in the face.' The Daily Telegraph Daniel Defoe bestrode the age like a colossus. He was both an observer and participant in events - informed and insightful. In this acclaimed biography, West offers both a history of Britain in Defoe's time as well as an in depth exploration of the life and mind of one of England's greatest and most misunderstood authors. Through this excellent and entertaining work we get the chance to glimpse not only the events which inspired Defoe to write his many masterpieces - including the classic Robinson Crusoe - but follow his career trajectory as tradesman, soldier and spy, to journalist, satirist, pamphleteer and novelist, drawing on his writings and letters from the period. Defoe was a man who experienced his fair share of troubles - from marital difficulties, and poor health, to