'Sheer delight ... 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 imprisonment and crippling debt. He was to his lasting shame no businessman, and was hounded by his creditors until his untimely death. But West stresses that it was Defoe's bankruptcy that led him to become the great novelist we know today.
Recommend reading for fans of Claire Tomalin and Peter Ackroyd.
'Superb ... There is a strong sense, throughout this minutely researched, hugely entertaining book, of a writer being restored to his rightful place in the literary hierarchy.' The Observer
Richard West was a celebrated journalist and much admired biographer. He is also the author of
Chaucer: The Life and Times of the First English Poet.