商品簡介
This book is a sustained attempt to disentangle the story of Daniel Defoe's political career, as journalist, polemicist, political theorist and government agent. The authors argue that this remarkable career calls for a good deal of rethinking, not least because biography and bibliography are here inextricably intertwined. They challenge standard accounts, arguing, for example, that Defoe's cherished story of his personal friendship with King William - a staple of all previous biographies - was probably an (immensely bold) fiction. Similarly, they put forward a radically new interpretation of the famous series of letters Defoe wrote in 1718, in which he claimed to have acted as an undercover agent to blunt the attacks of Tory journals on the Whig government. The book traces the complicated steps by which this leading spokesman for Whiggism fell out with his Whig friends but eventually returned to the fold.
