P N Furbank is Emeritus Professor of Literature at The Open University. He is the author of studies of Samuel Butler and Italo Svevo, and is the biographer of E M Forster and Diderot. His other books include Reflections on the Word 'Image' (1970), Unholy Pleasure: The Idea of Social Class (1985), and Behalf (1999) W R Owens is Professor of English Literature at The Open University. His publications include editions of John Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1987). The Pilgrim's Progress (2003) and two volumes in the Clarendon Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan (1994). A founder editor of the journal Bunyan Studies, he is also co-editor of John Bunyan and his England 1628-88 (1990), Shakespeare, Aphra Behn and the Canon (1996), and A Handbook to Literary Research (1998) Together P N Furbank and W R Owens have written over twenty articles on Defoe, and have compiled computer-generated concordances to Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Their joint books include The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (1988), Defoe De-Attributions (1994), and A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998). They have also edited Defoe's Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1991), and The True-Born Englishman and Other Writings (1997).

'Furbank and Owens are well qualified to write a political biography of Defoe ... they do an excellent job of assembling primary materials and historical evidence in support of the biography ... Highly recommended' CHOICE

• Introduction; Chapter 1 Poetry, Pamphleteering and the Pillory; Chapter 2 Defoe and the Dead King; Chapter 3 The Author of the Review; Chapter 4 Propagandist for the Union; Chapter 5 ‘Maintaining A Counter Correspondence’; Chapter 6 1710: The Fateful Step; Chapter 7 Defoe and the Whig Split; Chapter 8 The Return of The Prodigal;