Daniel Foe was born in London c. 1660, the son of James, a prosperous chandler and Presbyterian dissenter. He lived through the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, which left only his and two other houses standing in the area. As a general merchant, he was able to buy a country estate and a ship, though he was nearly always in debt. He joined the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, but was pardoned. However, he spent a spell in debtor's prison, after which he travelled Europe and Scotland, returning in 1695, when, now surnamed Defoe, he began serving as a Commissioner of the Glass Duty and, in 1696, running a brick and tile factory. He became a prolific pamphleteer, which led him to the pillory and Newgate Prison. In exchange for his liberty, he agreed to work as an intelligence agent for the Tories, then as a propagandist for the Whigs, and then as a mouthpiece for the Anglo-Scottish Union. His novels and non-fiction books occupied him from the mid 1710s until his death in 1731.
