Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe’s first act of reinvention may have been his name: born Foe, he later made himself Defoe—and signed it in several different ways. How much of the story he told about himself can be trusted?

Writing in the late 19th century, William Minto looks back to a restless 17th-century England, where politics could pull a young man far from the life planned for him. Educated at a Nonconformist academy for the ministry, Defoe turned instead to trade—and became a merchant, a rebel, a pamphleteer and, eventually, the author of Robinson Crusoe. Minto finds a man whose energy carried him into one venture after another, but whose own accounts of his adventures may be as inventive as his fiction. Where does Defoe’s self-portrait end, and the verifiable story begin?

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