The Bi-sexuality of Daniel Defoe: A Psychoanalytic Survey of the Man and His Works

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is known to many only by his first novel, "Robinson Crusoe", astonishingly written as he approached his sixtieth year. Acknowledged as the first of English novelists, he has also been awarded accolades for being the 'Father of Journalism', the most successful spy in British history, the precursor to contemporary depth psychologists, the most daring of early feminists, the most devious of confidence tricksters and fraudulent entrepreneurs, the unsurpassed travelogue presenter, the first spin-doctor and speech-writer to a king. Hurling his defiances against the Established Church and Roman Catholicism, he was also the intrepid upholder of dissenting beliefs.

Leo Abse deploys his forensic skills as a distinguished criminal lawyer and reforming parliamentarian to present an intriguing and novel Freudian overview of all Defoe's major works. Weaving the anecdotal and the personal with profound revelatory explorations of the psychodynamics and psychopathology of Defoe, his conclusions, strikingly relevant to today's political dilemmas, will precipitate debate in university English departments, startle many literary critics and be of absorbing interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, criminologists and all working in the field of mental health.