Daniel Defoe, A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies
Daniel Defoe is best known, of course, as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) but was also famous as a political pampleteer, and is often called the father of modern journalism. He was born as Daniel Foe in 1660, the son of a butcher in Stoke Newington in London, but used the grander-sounding 'Defoe' as his pen name. He was arrested, pilloried and imprisoned in 1703 for a pamphlet he wrote satirising high church Tories. He later wrote pamphlets for both the Tories and the Whigs. His novels also included Captain Singleton (1720) and Moll Flanders (1722). His three volume travel book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain was published between 1724 and 1727, and was innovative partly because Defoe had actually visited the places he described. He died in 1731.