Macmillan Collector’s Library: Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe was probably born in London in 1660 and we know little of his early life beyond his parentage – his father, James Foe, was a butcher – and that his childhood home was one of the few buildings in his area to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666.

His adult life was eventful and saw Foe (who adopted the pen name Defoe in 1703) rise through the ranks as a merchant, gain notoriety for pamphleteering and flung into prison as a result, achieve renown for his journalism, and become a spy for the government.

He was sixty when Robinson Crusoe, his first work of fiction, was published to great acclaim. Other novels followed, including Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year and Roxana, and Defoe continued writing until his death in 1731.