Until now, there has been no very satisfactory biography of Daniel Defoe, and this is a somewhat surprising state of affairs. Surely, the author of ”Robinson Crusoe,” ”Moll Flanders” and an almost ...

Years ago, in these pages, I confessed that I have read Daniel Defoe’s 1719 fictional tale, “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,” multiple times, as well as listened to the audio version. Crusoe’s ...

Mark Lawson presents a documentary exploring the far-reaching influence of Daniel Defoe. Bookshops have separate sections for Fiction, Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Travel Writing, Journalism, Economics ...

While authors such as Tim Severin have made the case for various models for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Frank’s well-researched if overly detailed account makes the case that his primary model was ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

David Roberts is the co-editor of the World Classics edition of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year with Louis Landa. In 1722, Daniel Defoe pulled off one of the great literary hoaxes of all ...