Daniel Defoe-Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas

Rating:
Summary: Biography or Bibliography?
Review: Before reading this book, I knew Daniel Defore only through his exciting fiction: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, etc.

It turns out that Defoe also has an exciting life: struggling merchant in and out of bankruptcy, political pamphleteer, pilloried for slander, government spy, and so on.

Sadly, though you can pick the interesting elements of Defoe's life out of this work, it takes some effort. Novak's book is really a lengthy analysis of Defoe through his writings and spends much more time discussing the polemical meaning of various poems than, say, Defoe's relationship with his wife, or his travel, or his education.

In fact, all aspects of Defoe's life are really only described in this biography insofar as they can be accessed through Defoe's writings. This makes the book -- whose scholarship I do not fault -- tedious and not very easy to read as biography.