A Spy Amongst Us: Daniel Defoe’s Secret Service and the Plot to End Scottish Independence

The true story of Daniel Defoe and the dirty tricks which helped bring Scotland into union with England

In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the end of Scottish sovereignty. But unbeknownst to the mob, a spy was in their midst--the English writer Daniel Defoe, now bankrupt and thrice pilloried, had turned a government agent.

Marc Mierowsky tells the dramatic story of Defoe and his fellow spies as they sabotaged the Scottish independence movement from the inside. Together they disseminated propaganda and built a network of operatives from London to the upper Highlands, providing the English government with up-to-the-minute intelligence and monitoring its adversaries’ every move.

Through the lives of Defoe and his ring, their handlers, and opponents, Mierowsky guides us through this shadowy underworld of espionage and propaganda--revealing a disturbing and distinctly modern political campaign.

Marc Mierowsky is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne, where he researches seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature and intellectual history. He is an associate editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Correspondence of Daniel Defoe and coeditor of Oxford World Classic’s edition of The Fortunate Mistress [Roxana].