(1660–1731)
an English writer who is considered to be the first English writer of novels. His most famous novel, Robinson Crusoe (1719), was followed by Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) set during the Great Plague of London, and Roxana (1724). For most of his life Defoe worked as a political journalist, and he did not begin writing his novels until he was nearly 60.