Daniel Defoe is english author, born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of 1659 or early in 1660, of a nonconformist family. His grandfather, Daniel Foe, lived at Etton, Northamptonshire, apparently in comfortable circumstances, for he is said to have kept a pack of hounds. As to the variation of name, Defoe or Foe, its owner signed either indifferently until late in life, and where his initials occur they are sometimes D.F. and sometimes D.D.F. Three autograph letters of his are extant, all addressed in 1705 to the same person, and signed respectively D. Foe, de Foe and Daniel Defoe. His father, James Foe, was a butcher and a citizen of London.

To 1726 also belongs The Political History of the Devil. This is a curious book, partly explanatory of Defoe's ideas on morality, and partly belonging to a series of demonological works which he wrote, and of which the chief others are A System of Magic (1726), and An Essay on the History of Apparitions (1728), issued the year before under another title. In all these works his treatment is on the whole rational and sensible but in The History of the Devil he is somewhat hampered by an insufficiently worked-out theory as to the nature and personal existence of his hero, and the manner in which he handles the subject is an odd and not altogether satisfactory mixture of irony and earnestness. A Plan of English Commerce, containing very enlightened views on export trade, appeared in 1728.