Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe had been a merchant, bankrupt, pamphleteer, government spy and prisoner before he published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, at about 59. Its success led to Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year within three years. His decades of journalism and political writing gave him the plain, factual voice that made the novels feel like true accounts, and Crusoe is often called one of the first English novels.