A Collection of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Critical Writings on Daniel Defoe

Abstract

This collection of critical writing on Daniel Defoe comprises part of a research project undertaken in 2001 and 2002 during a period of intercalated leave from the early stages of my doctoral thesis. The primary purpose of the project was to produce a comprehensive, and generously-proportioned, portrait of the changing critical reputation of Defoe between 1700 and 1900. While the material collected has undergone a rigorous editorial process that renders it -- necessarily -- selective, one of my fundamental objectives throughout has been to give the broadest possible sense of the developing critical response to Defoe’s extraordinarily diverse canon of writing.