In 1719, Defoe returned to the novel . His career in novels was short but fruitful. Including the period of the first part of ´Robinson Crusoe´ in 1719 to the first part of ´Roxanna´in 1724. His first novel was the reason for his fame: ´Robinson Crusoe´. It was published in three parts between 1719 to 1720, and tells about a man who is abandoned on a desert island . It was based on the story of a scotish sailor called Alexander Selkirk who lived for five years on the desert island of Juan Fernandez until he was rescued in 1709. It was narrated in first person.

After ´Robinson Crusoe ´, ´Captain Singleton ´was published (1720), which happened in remote lands and seas and narrates the life of a pirate.

With ´Memoirs of a cavalier´ Defoe wrote his first historic novel without leaving the autobiographic form , he describes to us the imaginary recollections of the war of a soldier of the monarch and about the different expedition in which he colaborated at the beginning of the seventeenth century firstly in Germany with King G. A. Of Sweden and later in England.

´A Journal of the Plague Year ´(1722) which is in the form of a diary , tells about of a citizen of London, H. F. , who gives us his testimony of what it is like to live in time of plague( in 1665 ).

In 1722 ´Moll Flanders´and ´Colonel Jacque ´were published two picaresque novels . The last novel ´Roxanna´(1724) is a narrative of the adventures of what it was like for a girl to live in high society.

After ´Roxanna´, Defoe left the novel , his literary changes from being invented to the truth with biographies of thieves, history of pirates, the memory of a well- documented military figure , etc. ( The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Editon by Javier Sanchez Diez. Catedra. Letras Universales. 1999.) (A Literary History of England. Edited by Albert C. Baugh. 2^nd edition . 1967.)