Daniel Defoe

This classic story of a shipwrecked mariner on a deserted island is perhaps the greatest adventure in all of English literature. Fleeing from pirates, Robinson Crusoe is swept ashore in a storm possessing only a knife, a box of tobacco, a pipe-and the will to survive. His is the saga of a man alone: a man who overcomes self-pity and despair to reconstruct his life; who painstakingly teaches himself how to fashion a pot, bake bread, build a canoe; and who, after twenty-four agonizing years of solitude, discovers a human footprint in the sand... Consistently popular since its first publication in 1719, Daniel Defoe's story of human endurance in an exotic, faraway land exerts a timeless appeal. The first important English novel, Robinson Crusoe has taken its rightful place among the great myths of Western civilization.

Britain in the early eighteenth century: an introduction that is both informative and imaginative, reliable and entertaining. To the tradition of travel writing Daniel Defoe brings a lifetime's experience as a businessman, soldier, economic journalist and spy, and his Tour (1724-6) is an invaluable source of social and economic history. But this book is far more than a beautifully written guide to Britain just before the industrial revolution, for Defoe possessed a wild, inventive streak that endows his work with astonishing energy and tension, and the Tour is his deeply imaginative response to a brave new economic world. By employing his skills as a chronicler, a polemicist and a creative writer keenly sensitive to the depredations of time, Defoe more than achieves his aim of rendering 'the present state' of Britain.

A satire on both popular ideas of the devil and the very nature of mankind, The Political History of the Devil has long been lauded as a classic of its kind. In this unusual work, Daniel Defoe mocks the traditional idea of the devil, portraying human beings as more capable of ingenious crimes than the cloven-hoofed protagonist could ever have conceived. We are shown the devil returning to earth, shocked at man's actions, and shocked still further to find himself being blamed for them. Defoe proceeds to look at the role of the modern monarchs, tyrants and their conflicts, and shows in his elegant and piquant style how much, or indeed how little, the devil's influence was ever-present. A comic look at the progress of the world, this is a stylish work in which the author delights in biting observation, and leaves in his wake more than a whiff of brimstone.

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