Daniel Defoe 
Robinson Crusoe 

First published in 1719, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is a novel by Daniel Defoe and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English.



‘Robinson Crusoe’ is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a ‘false document’ and gives a realistic frame story.