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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Daniel Defoe
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(1660–1731) Prolific author and pamphleteer, born in London, who became one of the first writers of realistic fiction with *Robinson Crusoe and *Moll Flanders. He had an extraordinary career: he was engaged in a wide variety of commercial enterprises, mainly unsuccessful; he founded and almost single-handedly wrote a thrice-weekly periodical, The Review (1712–13); he was the chief pamphleteer for successive governments (not necessarily of the same political persuasion) and he travelled widely as a semi-secret agent collecting political information. This experience resulted in his valuable description of the country, A Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (3 vols, 1724–7).
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His investigative and imaginative skills came together in Journal of the Plague Year (1722), a fictional account of London during the *Great Plague of 1665 based on contemporary documents.
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