He was a man of action as well as a man of letters.

The writing of the books which have given him immortality was little more than an accident in his career, a comparatively trifling and casual item in the total expenditure of his many-sided energy.

He was nearly sixty when he wrote _Robinson Crusoe_.
Before that event he had been a rebel, a merchant, a manufacturer, a writer of popular satires in verse, a bankrupt; had acted as secretary to a public commission, been employed in secret services by five successive Administrations, written innumerable pamphlets, and edited more than one newspaper.

He had led, in fact, as adventurous a life as any of his own heroes, and had met quickly succeeding difficulties with equally ready and fertile ingenuity.
For many of the incidents in Defoe's life we are indebted to himself.

He had all the vaingloriousness of exuberant vitality, and was animated in the recital of his own adventures.