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What genre is Robinson Crusoe?

Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, is an early example of the genre of novel. It was composed to mimic the first-person account of a shipwreck adventure, with the words "written by himself" on the title page, so many early readers took it to be a factual account of a shipwrecked sailor's adventures alone (and later with a native companion he called Friday) on a deserted island. 


Although based on a true story, the work was the imaginative construct of author Daniel Defoe: there was no actual Robison Crusoe and while trying to be factually realistic in its detail, the story, if inspired by other reading, largely sprang from Defoe's mind. Because of its effort at realistically showing how a person would survive on an deserted island (no magic saves Crusoe) and the depiction of a psychologically realistic protagonist, the book is considered a novel rather than a romance. 

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