Daniel Defoe began to write Robinson Crusoe when he was

Daniel Defoe(about 1660-1731)was an important novelist in the English literature. When he was young, he served as a soldier and had been to Spain, Italy, France and Germany. At the same time, he went in for politics. He cared much about the development of capitalism. He wrote a lot of articles against it and he was put into prison twice for that. It was not until he was nearly sixty that he began to write the famous novel Robinson Crusoe, which was published in May, 1719. It spread so rapidly that the story was known to every household very soon. Robinson Crusoe can be divided into three parts. The first part is about Crusoe’s three voyages, the second about his hunting, hiding in caves, farming and his hard struggles against nature on a small deserted island, the third is about the things which happened after his return from the deserted island. The second part is the body of the novel, in which Robinson’s characters are clearly shown. Defoe wrote his novel in a simple style and his language is easy to understand. His novel writing set a milestone of the modern English novel. In his later part of life, he was in poor health and lived very poorly.