Daniel Defoe, A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies

Picture of Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe is best known, of course, as the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) but was also famous as a political pampleteer, and is often called the father of modern journalism. He was born as Daniel Foe in 1660, the son of a butcher in Stoke Newington in London, but used the grander-sounding 'Defoe' as his pen name. He was arrested, pilloried and imprisoned in 1703 for a pamphlet he wrote satirising high church Tories. He later wrote pamphlets for both the Tories and the Whigs. His novels also included Captain Singleton (1720) and Moll Flanders (1722). His three volume travel book, Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain was published between 1724 and 1727, and was innovative partly because Defoe had actually visited the places he described. He died in 1731.

The following sections are available:
Preface to First Volume
Letter 1, Part 1: Through Essex to Colchester
Letter 1, Part 2: Harwich and Suffolk
Letter 1, Part 3: Norfolk and Cambridgeshire
Appendix to letter 1
Letter 2, Part 1: Kent Coast and Maidstone
Letter 2, Part 2: Canterbury and Sussex
Letter 2, Part 3: Hampshire and Surrey
Letter 3, Part 1: London to Winchester
Letter 3, Part 2: Salisbury and Dorset
Letter 3, Part 3: From Exeter to Land's End
Appendix to letter 3
Addenda to the first volume
Preface to Second Volume
Letter 4, Part 1: North Cornwall and Devon
Letter 4, Part 2: Somerset and Wiltshire
Letter 4, Part 3: Berkshire and Buckinghamshire
Letter 5 (London), Part 1: Overview and Suburbs
Letter 5 (London), Part 2: The City
Letter 5 (London), Part 3: The Court and Westminster
Letter 6, Part 1: Middlesex, Hertford and Buckinghamshire
Letter 6, Part 2: Oxford, Bristol and Gloucester
Letter 6, Part 3: Worcester, Hereford and Wales
Letter 7, Part 1: Cheshire and North-West Midlands
Letter 7, Part 2: East Midlands
Appendix to the second volume
Preface to Third Volume
Introduction to Third Volume
Letter 8, Part 1: The Trent Valley
Letter 8, Part 2: The Peak District
Letter 8, Part 3: South and West Yorkshire
Letter 8, Part 4: Leeds and North Yorkshire
Letter 9: Eastern Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland
Letter 10: Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland
Introduction to Scotland
Letter 11: South-Eastern Scotland
Letter 12, Part 1: South-Western Scotland
Letter 12, Part 2: Glasgow and central Scotland
Letter 13, Part 1: Fife and Perth
Letter 13, Part 2: Dundee, Aberdeen and the Highlands