Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) was an English merchant, pamphleteer, government agent and journalist who came to fiction at the age of fifty-nine. Born Daniel Foe in London, the son of a tallow chandler, he traded in hosiery, wine and bricks, went bankrupt more than once, was pilloried and imprisoned in 1703 for an ironic pamphlet on dissenters and afterward worked as a spy and propagandist for Robert Harley. Robinson Crusoe in 1719 was followed within five years by Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year and Roxana, all presented as true accounts. He wrote several hundred works in all and died hiding from creditors in Moorfields.