Robinson Crusoe was inspired by the experiences of a real sailor, Alexander Selkirk. When it was
first published, readers thought it was a true story and Defoe himself encouraged this
misapprehension. He was not conscious of initiating a new literary genre. For him what he wrote
was not a work of imagination but realistic description for “a credible fictional word”. He chose
the first person narration form to enphasize the realistic effect.
If we have a look at the frontispiece of ROBINSON CRUSOE first edition we notice that the whole
story is syntetized: “....who lived eight and twenty years, all alone in an un-inhabited island on the
coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Orinoco ........having been cast on Shore
by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself “WRITTEN BY HIMSELF: the writer and
the narrator clash. The first person narrator can be handled by the novelist in such a way as to
make the reader accept completely what the narrator relates, which is his point of view.
