Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) lived a life full of business successes and reverses, financial gains and losses, and political victories and defeats. Sent by his father to study for the ministry, Defoe entered the business world instead. In 1685, Defoe took part in the Duke of Monmouth’s ill-fated rebellion against King James II; and in 1688, he joined a volunteer regiment that acted as William III’s escort into London. By 1692, Defoe’s business affairs had foundered and creditors filed suit against him, but he talked his way out of debtors’ prison. His poem The True-Born Englishman (1701) met with resounding success. In 1702, after he attacked the Tories in a pamphlet, the enraged government imprisoned him for two years; upon his release, he became a secret agent for the government. Between 1718 and 1723 he published Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and A Journal of the Plague Year.

Paul Theroux is the award-winning author of such novels as Picture Palace (winner of the Whitbread Prize for fiction) , The Mosquito Coast, My Secret History, Saint Jack, and Kowloon Tong. He has also published numerous best-selling travel books, including The Great Railway Bazaar, The Kingdom by the Sea, and The Pillars of Hercules.

Robert Mayer is Professor of British Literature and Director of the Screen Studies Program at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe and the editor of Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen. His recent work includes the essay ‘‘Robinson Crusoe in Hollywood’’ and an ongoing study of authorship and reading that focuses on Sir Walter Scott.