Daniel Defoe: The Life and Strange Adventures

The colorful life of a literary phenomenon and masterfully crafted biography that’s won applause from readers and critics alike. Intimate with monarchs, pilloried at Newgate Prison, hounded by his creditors to the day he died, the maverick newsman, satirist, soldier, and spy Daniel Defoe did not so much defy contradiction as epitomize it. So Richard West continually demonstrates in this spirited biography of the indefatigable Puritan pamphleteer who earned himself literary immortality with such novels as the scandalous Moll Flanders and the all-time bestselling Robinson Crusoe. “Richard West has provided what must now be counted as the standard popular life of Defoe, chronicling the irresistible story of this writer with an appropriate passion.” – Wall Street Journal “This lively book rambles across [Defoe’s] England . . . that realm of fops, rogues, merchants, sailors, unctuous divines, and fugitive pamphleteers” – New York Times Book Review “Vivid and comprehensive” – San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle “A full account of Defoe’s tempestuous life and times in a biography that doubles as a one-volume history of 17th- and early 18th-century England” – Washington Post Book World “Readable, entertaining, colorful, and hugely informative blend” – Christian Science Monitor “Delightful” – Atlantic Monthly