Daniel Defoe was born in London around 1660. He was a merchant, a pamphleteer, a political spy and a journalist, and was once put in the pillory for a pamphlet that offended the government.

He was nearly sixty when he published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, partly inspired by the true story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, marooned for four years on an island off Chile. It is often called the first English novel. He died in 1731.