British · b. 1660
Daniel Defoe was an English writer and journalist often regarded as a founder of the English novel, best known for Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
Daniel Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer — a journalist, pamphleteer, businessman, and spy — before producing the novels that secured his lasting fame relatively late in life.
Robinson Crusoe (1719), the tale of a castaway’s survival and ingenuity on a desert island, is often cited as one of the first English novels and remains one of the most widely read books in the language. Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year further demonstrated his pioneering realism and gift for vivid, circumstantial narrative.
Defoe is recognized as a foundational figure in the development of the novel and a master of convincing, detail-rich storytelling.
by Daniel Defoe
Shipwrecked alone on a tropical island near Trinidad, Robinson Crusoe survives for twenty-eight years — building a shelter, growing food, domesticating animals, maintaining a calendar, and eventually encountering the man he calls Friday. Often called the first English novel, and the founding text of the survival narrative.
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