Colonel Jack (Broadview Editions)

About this book

Long dismissed by critics as a novel of merely historical interest Colonel Jack is one of Daniel Defoes most entertaining revealing and complex works. It is the supposed autobiography of an English gentleman who begins life as a child of the London streets. He and his brothers are brought up as pickpockets and highwaymen but Jack seeks to improve himself. Kidnapped and taken to America he becomes first a slave then an overseer on plantations in Maryland. Jacks story is one of dramatic turns of fortune that ultimately lead to a life of law-abiding prosperity as a plantation owner. Historical appendices relate to eighteenth-century Virginia and Maryland and to contemporary crime punishment and imprisonment.