Daniel Defoe
Born Daniel Foe.
(1660 — 1731)
A famous English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, considered among the founders of the English novel.
Defoe was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural.
Robinson Crusoe, a novel, first published in 1719, is presented as an autobiography of the title character — a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. Despite its simple narrative style it was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre.