Defoe began working on the series of radical proposals to improve England in about 1692 when he had just gotten out of prison and was hiding from authorities and creditors; by the time he had finished and published them in 1697, he had also righted himself publicly and financially. The collection represents new beginnings for him as a political and literary figure, new assertions of principles, new ventures on public terrain. It also is solidly within the tradition of the flurry of similar proposals and prophecies published, usually as pamphlets, during that decade.