In Defoe´s times, fiction in prose wasn´t appreciated. They believed that enjoyment perhaps a novel or romance could be enjoyable to unpreocupied minds but teaching the only thing that they did was to deceive or falsify the truth for two reasons: because of the puritan element in a society which refused any kind of leisure time and entertainment and for the neoclassical times which to accept as legitimate everything that didn´t support a previous code or accepted way of things and the novel fell into this category. The types of literature that were acceptable were underworld stories for the men and for the majority of women who read, an undignified type of literature which was written especially for them.

We can speak about two scandalous chronicles: the words of Mary Manley and Eliza Haywood. Fiction existed under the name of novel or romance but unappreciated and without value. Defoe´s efforts to convince people that his work wasn´t in this category is shown in that he made an effort to write a different type of book in style that didn´t even have a name. Now it´s known as a novel.

Defoe was aware of the newness of his stories and tried to explain how his stories were true, and how morals could be learnt from his stories. He argued that his book weren´t novel or romances but biographies based on real life. He play with the two meanings of the word History: << and so the work isn´t a story, but a History.>>. (The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Edition by Javier Sanchez Diez. Catedra . Letras Universales. 1999.) (The short Oxford History of English Literature. Andrew Sanders. Clarendon press. Oxford. 1994)