Geographic Literacy and Defoe's Complete Englishmen: Mere Bookcases v. Walking Maps

Abstract

Whether learning how to work the streets as a pickpocket or picking up the art of navigation, Daniel Defoe's characters find, in John Richetti's words, that ‘the exact apprehension of the world is a technique for survival’: a measure of their capacity for ‘pushing back against a potentially destructive world’. This article pursues this issue of apprehension beyond Defoe's novels and into his non‐fictional explorations of model lives, where geographic literacy or competence often figures as an index of the capacity to act effectively and responsibly in the world.