Tales from the Marshes by Julia Jones
A friend who is a professor at Ankara University mentions that she's reading Daniel Defoe as part of her current research into the relationship between Place and Fiction: James Canton, a lecturer at Essex University runs an MA course in 'Wild Writing'. I'm reading his book Out of Essex: Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape and realise that the next chapter is entitled 'Finding Defoe. Mmmm, yes, I like this minor coincidence and I like Defoe as well. His A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724) is an impressive early example of travel journalism and Robinson Crusoe (1719) is the great-grand-daddy of all adventure stories. One presents itself as fact and the other as fiction, yet they're not so far apart: Crusoe was based on a genuine piece of experience -- Alexander Selkirk's solitary survival on a Pacific Island -- and the Tour is by no means all sober reportage. James Canton carries out a simple piece of fact-checking into one of its ...