The Life of Daniel Defoe: A Critical Biography

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. The book provides a commentary on most of his voluminous political, religious, moral, and economic journalism, as well as on all of his narrative fictions. All these works are situated in the precise historical circumstances of the eighteenth century in which Defoe was an important and active participant. The biography focuses on Defoe’s life and mind as it appears in his writing, and emphasises his distinctive style and rhetoric.

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.