This comprehensive and authoritative edition of the correspondence of Daniel Defoe situates each letter in its biographical, literary, and historical contexts. A unique source for a turbulent period of British history, Defoe's correspondence spans topics including the first age of party marked by Tory and Whig rivalry, religious tensions between the Church and Dissenters, the uncertainty of the monarchical succession, the birth of Great Britain and its establishment as a global empire, and the use of the press to mould public opinion. As well as an introduction discussing Defoe's epistolary habits and the distinctive features of his letters, headnotes and annotations explain each document's occasion, beginning in 1703 with Defoe hunted by the government for sedition, and ending in 1730 with him again in hiding, fleeing creditors months before his death. The volume is illustrated with examples of Defoe's letters, offering a fresh window onto Defoe's manuscript habits.

Winner, 2023 Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize, The Literary Encyclopedia

‘This authoritative edition gives insights into a range of contemporary events and preoccupations: colonization, religious controversy, communication and transport networks, the publishing trade and relations between authors and printers, the operation of eighteenth-century spymasters and methods of political fact-finding. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of the period, not least the Union with Scotland and the Hanoverian Succession.’

Margarette Lincoln Source: Times Literary Supplement

‘Nicholas Seager's outstanding and painstaking scholarship has created an edition that deserves to be the standard by which we measure for at least the next 50 years.'

Kit Kincade Source: NPEC Reviews

‘… this edition is a truly splendid literary and literary-critical trove … Hard to imagine it being outdone or superseded. Plainly, as Defoe might say, final words.’

Valentine Cunningham Source: The Glass

‘This volume offers many resources to scholars and students of Defoe. The detailed introduction and extensive notes open these letters to a wider public by adding crucial critical and historical contexts to its exceptional editorial work. This will now be the standard edition of Defoe’s letters. Barring major new archival discoveries, it is difficult to imagine needing another for many decades to come.’

Christopher Loar Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies

‘Seager’s new edition of Defoe’s correspondence will be the standard and authoritative account for many years’

Markman Ellis Source: Review of English Studies

‘Nicholas Seager's excellent, carefully edited edition … reestablishes the texts of the correspondence from original manuscripts in cases where they are available and adds an extensive editorial apparatus … Its lengthy introductory essay stands out as a model of its kind’

Christopher Loar Source: Eighteenth-Century Fiction

‘Nicholas Seager has produced a stunningly impressive edition of Defoe’s correspondence from 1703 to 1730 … The letters are lively, pugnacious, detailed, typographically (scribally) dramatic, and intrinsically compelling; in Nicholas Seager they have an eminently worthy editor’

Cynthia Wall Source: Bunyan Studies