London-born Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) pursued a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, secret agent, and political pamphleteer. He wrote books on economics, history, biography, and crime. But he is best remembered for his fiction, which he began to write late in his life and which includes the novels Moll Flanders, Roxana, and the celebrated Robinson Crusoe.
![Title: A General History of the Pyrates [Pirates], from Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence, to the Present Time; With the Remarkable Actions and Adventures of the Two Female Pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny., Author: Daniel Defoe](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/mimages/0000000000000_p0_v0_s192x300.jpg)
