Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Consolidator | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 2 | The Apparition of Mrs. Veal | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 3 | The King of Pirates | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 4 | Captain Singleton | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 5 | Memoirs of a Cavalier | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 6 | Moll Flanders | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 7 | Colonel Jack | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 8 | History of the Plague in London | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 9 | A Journal of the Plague Year | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 10 | Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
| 11 | The Pirate Gow | - | Daniel Defoe | Buy |
Defoe wrote most of his fiction in a burst of productivity during the early 1720s, when he was already in his sixties. These novels share a first-person, confessional style that makes them feel surprisingly modern. Characters like Moll Flanders and Roxana are complicated people driven by circumstance rather than simple morality.
Several of these books blur the line between novel and journalism. A Journal of the Plague Year reads like a genuine eyewitness account, complete with statistics and street addresses, even though Defoe assembled it from research and secondhand sources. Captain Singleton and Colonel Jack follow similar patterns of rogues and adventurers making their way through a rough world.