Our book is about Daniel Defoe's political career, but this phrase may be thought to call for some defining. Evidently, someone who functions mainly by means of his pen does not have a political career in the same sense as a statesman, whose daily and nightly preoccupation is power. There was indeed a brief and extraordinary moment in 1701 when Defoe might be said to have wielded power and have become a man of action: the time when he presented himself at Westminster, guarded by sixteen ‘gentlemen of quality’, to deliver a paper of grievances and demands (Legion's Memorial) on behalf of ‘two hundred thousand Englishmen’. No doubt, too, by his advice to his patron Robert Harley, he exercised influence, but influence is not the same as power. By Defoe's ‘political career’, therefore, we are meaning his influence, or attempts at influence, as a purveyor of ideas and opinions, and also the influence, sometimes very unnerving, of political events on him. In consequence – the fact might seem like an irony but of course is not – we know a great deal more about Defoe's political ideas than we do about Harley's. Whatever ideas Harley had, and sometimes one wonders whether he actually had any, as distinct from instincts or schemes, he would have been inclined to keep to himself.

We must be clear, also, about another distinction. Defoe wrote voluminously on very many different topics, and one of them, from early on, was social reform.