Pat Rogers’s Defoe’s “Tour” and Early Modern Britain is a positive treatment of an optimistic account. Here is a confident discussion of Daniel Defoe’s Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (published in three volumes between 1724 and 1726), one that most fruitfully approaches the context, conception, and contents of Defoe’s work from a number of angles, notably those of form and function, time and place. The key theme is that of Defoe’s work as an epic greeting of the onset of modernization, as represented by the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 and advances in agriculture, industry, and transportation—the last a topic that greatly fascinates Rogers and to which he gives considerable attention. Indeed, the chapter on Defoe’s account of English roads is particularly interesting, not least in the way it moves between the roads of the period, Defoe’s experience on those roads, and his plans for the future.

Displaying impressive erudition and by a major scholar of justifiably high repute, this study is bound to enjoy very favorable reviews, so it is important to notice that, as in most elegies to modernization, there are issues in the book, and these deserve mention alongside the praise. There are problematic particularities one could point out, starting with the handsomely produced map on the cover that we are informed is of Herefordshire when in fact it is of Monmouthshire, but it is necessary, instead, to ask why Rogers has given such an exposition of Defoe’s Britain. He knows well that