Daniel Defoe

Discover the works of Daniel Defoe (c.1660–1731), the English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer widely regarded as one of the earliest practitioners of the novel as a literary form. Writing with a vivid, journalistic realism that was entirely new to English literature, Defoe created characters of extraordinary psychological depth and placed them in situations of gripping, immediate drama. His masterpiece Robinson Crusoe (1719) — the story of a shipwrecked sailor who survives alone on a deserted island for twenty-eight years through ingenuity, faith, and sheer determination — is one of the most widely published books in history and is often cited as the first English novel. His other major works include Moll Flanders (1722), the picaresque story of a woman who survives poverty, crime, and social exclusion by her wits; A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), a harrowing fictional account of the Great Plague of London; and Roxana (1724). Essential reading for lovers of classic English literature.