Daniel Defoe Books in Order (Updated September 8, 2026)

Daniel Defoe was an English writer, journalist, pamphleteer, political commentator, and early novelist whose fiction includes Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Roxana. His bibliography is unusually difficult to organize because he published hundreds of works, often anonymously or pseudonymously, and scholars still dispute the attribution of some titles traditionally connected with him.

For readers interested primarily in Defoe’s narrative fiction, the safest approach is to separate the Robinson Crusoe sequence from his independent fictional memoirs and from his large body of journalism, history, religious writing, travel, biography, and political pamphlets. Most of the famous novels are standalones and can be read independently.

Where to Begin With Daniel Defoe

Best starting point: Robinson Crusoe is the natural introduction to Defoe. It is his best known work and begins the only major sequence in his fiction that has a clear recurring central character.

• Robinson Crusoe: begin with the original 1719 book, then read The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
• Serious Reflections: belongs to the wider Crusoe sequence but is reflective and essayistic rather than a conventional third adventure novel.
• Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, and Roxana: separate narratives with different protagonists.
• A Journal of the Plague Year: standalone historical narrative presented with documentary realism.
• Complete Defoe reading: publication order is more useful than trying to construct a fictional chronology across unrelated narrators.

Robinson Crusoe Books in the Correct Order

Robinson Crusoe is the clearest continuing sequence in Defoe’s bibliography. The first two books carry forward Crusoe’s life and travels, while the third uses Crusoe as the voice for moral, religious, and philosophical reflections.

1. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (1719), normally published as Robinson Crusoe
2. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
3. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720)

Recommended order: read all three in publication order. The first two form the narrative sequence. The third is best regarded as companion material for readers who want the complete original Crusoe cycle.

Is The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe a True Sequel?

Yes. It continues Crusoe’s life after the events of the first book and sends him on further travels. It was published only months after the original Robinson Crusoe in 1719.

Readers interested in the character’s complete narrative should not stop with the island episode. The Farther Adventures substantially extends Crusoe’s later life.

Is Serious Reflections a Third Robinson Crusoe Novel?

Not in the conventional sense. Serious Reflections is connected to Crusoe and was presented as part of his life and thought, but it is dominated by essays and reflections rather than another continuous survival adventure.

Optional for story-only readers: read it if you want the complete Defoe-authored Crusoe sequence. Readers interested only in Crusoe’s fictional adventures can reasonably stop after The Farther Adventures.

Daniel Defoe’s Major Fiction in Publication Order

Defoe’s prose works do not fit neatly into modern genre labels. Some are novels, some imitate memoirs or journals, and others blur fiction, biography, travel narrative, and reportage. The following sequence covers the principal fictional and fictionalized narratives most often read today.

1. The Consolidator (1705)
2. Robinson Crusoe (1719)
3. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
4. Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720)
5. Captain Singleton (1720)
6. Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720)
7. Moll Flanders (1722)
8. A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
9. Colonel Jack (1722)
10. Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)
11. A New Voyage Round the World (1725)

The precise boundaries of Defoe’s fiction remain a scholarly issue. Works such as A New Voyage Round the World and some biographical narratives may be categorized differently depending on the bibliography being used.

Reading-order rule: these works are not one interconnected series. Publication order is useful for following Defoe’s development, but a reader can select Moll Flanders, Captain Singleton, Roxana, or A Journal of the Plague Year without reading the earlier titles first.

Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and Roxana: Are They Connected?

No. These books are sometimes grouped because each uses a first-person life narrative and follows a protagonist through crime, social instability, survival, or moral compromise. They do not, however, form a shared plot.

1. Moll Flanders (1722)
2. Colonel Jack (1722)
3. Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress (1724)

Reading them in this order is useful if you want to compare Defoe’s development of fictional autobiography, but it is not required for continuity.

Captain Singleton and Memoirs of a Cavalier

Both Captain Singleton and Memoirs of a Cavalier appeared in 1720, during the extraordinary burst of narrative writing that followed the success of Robinson Crusoe.

Memoirs of a Cavalier presents itself as the recollections of a seventeenth-century soldier who experiences continental warfare and the English Civil War. Captain Singleton follows a very different adventurer through travel, piracy, and an extraordinary journey across Africa.

Separate continuity: neither is a Robinson Crusoe sequel, and the two books do not share protagonists or a continuing storyline.

Where A Journal of the Plague Year Belongs

A Journal of the Plague Year was published in 1722 and reconstructs the Great Plague of London of 1665 through a narrator who describes events as if recording them firsthand.

The work occupies an unusual position between historical reconstruction and fiction. Defoe was a child at the time of the plague, so the book is not a literal diary written by him during the epidemic.

Standalone: it has no narrative connection to Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, or the Robinson Crusoe books. Read it independently or place it in its 1722 publication position during a complete Defoe project.

What Is The Consolidator?

The Consolidator, published in 1705, is an early satirical prose work involving an imaginary journey to the Moon. Its political allegory and speculative machinery make it markedly different from the realistic fictional memoirs for which Defoe later became famous.

Optional early work: it can be treated as the starting point for a broad Defoe fiction project, but readers interested specifically in the mature novels can begin with Robinson Crusoe.

A Practical Defoe Novel Reading Route

Readers who want the principal fiction without attempting Defoe’s enormous complete bibliography can use this order:

1. Robinson Crusoe
2. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
3. Captain Singleton
4. Memoirs of a Cavalier
5. Moll Flanders
6. A Journal of the Plague Year
7. Colonel Jack
8. Roxana
9. Serious Reflections, optional

This is a reader-friendly route rather than strict publication order. It keeps the two narrative Crusoe books together, then moves through Defoe’s major independent fictional lives before returning to the more essayistic Crusoe companion.

Daniel Defoe Travel Books and Geographic Writing

Travel and geography appear throughout Defoe’s writing, but not every travel book is fiction. Readers should keep his major descriptive works separate from the novel sequence.

• A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (published in volumes from 1724 to 1727)
• A New Voyage Round the World (1725), generally treated as a fictional or fictionalized voyage narrative
• Various shorter geographical, commercial, and travel writings published throughout Defoe’s career

A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain is a major Defoe work, but it does not continue Robinson Crusoe or another fictional protagonist. It is best read as travel and social observation.

Defoe’s Pirate and Criminal Narratives

Defoe repeatedly wrote about criminals, pirates, thieves, and notorious public figures. Some of these works sit close to fiction, biography, or sensational journalism, which makes attribution and classification difficult.

• The King of Pirates (1719), concerning Captain Avery
• The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard (1724)
• Further pamphlets and narratives concerning criminals and pirates appeared during the 1720s

Scope caution: older bibliographies attributed a very large number of anonymous works to Defoe. Modern scholarship is more cautious. A reading-order page should therefore avoid treating every historically attributed criminal or pirate narrative as unquestionably his.

Was A General History of the Pyrates Written by Daniel Defoe?

The 1724 A General History of the Pyrates was published under the name Captain Charles Johnson and was long attributed by some scholars to Daniel Defoe. That attribution is disputed and is not secure enough to treat the book as an unquestioned Defoe title.

Separate, disputed attribution: readers interested in eighteenth-century pirate literature may choose to read it alongside Defoe, but it should not be inserted into a definitive Defoe bibliography without qualification.

Important Daniel Defoe Nonfiction in Publication Context

Defoe’s reputation during his own lifetime rested on much more than novels. His output included political argument, religion, economics, commerce, history, social criticism, and practical advice.

1. An Essay upon Projects (1697)
2. The True-Born Englishman (1701)
3. The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702)
4. A Hymn to the Pillory (1703)
5. The Storm (1704)
6. The History of the Union of Great Britain (1709)
7. The Family Instructor (1715)
8. A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724 to 1727)
9. The Complete English Tradesman (1725 to 1727)
10. The Political History of the Devil (1726)

This is a selective list rather than a complete nonfiction bibliography. Defoe’s total output is too large and too attribution-sensitive for a practical Books in Order page to present every pamphlet as equally certain.

Do Daniel Defoe’s Books Share a Timeline?

No. Robinson Crusoe has its own continuing life narrative, but Defoe’s other major fictional narrators inhabit separate stories. Moll Flanders does not cross into Captain Singleton’s adventures, and Colonel Jack is not a sequel to either.

A universal chronological order would therefore create connections that are not present in the texts. Publication order is the more useful master sequence.

Publication Order Is the Best Choice for a Complete Fiction Read

If you want to follow Defoe’s emergence as a major prose storyteller, use publication order. It shows the transition from satirical and political prose into the extraordinary run of fictional memoirs that appeared from 1719 through the mid-1720s.

The only sequence that should be kept firmly together is Robinson Crusoe. The other major works can be read independently, although publication order reveals how Defoe repeatedly adapted the first-person life narrative to different kinds of experience.

Daniel Defoe’s Final Years and Publication Status

Daniel Defoe died in 1731. His original literary career therefore ended in the early eighteenth century, although his works have been reprinted, abridged, adapted, translated, and repackaged continuously ever since.

Modern editions of Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, or another Defoe title may carry a recent publication date. That is the date of the edition, not a new installment in Defoe’s bibliography.

There are no forthcoming original Daniel Defoe novels.

Questions Readers Ask About Defoe’s Books

What was Daniel Defoe’s first novel?

The answer depends on how narrowly the word novel is defined. The Consolidator appeared in 1705 as an imaginative prose satire, while Robinson Crusoe in 1719 is generally treated as the beginning of Defoe’s mature novelistic period and is his most important fictional starting point.

How many Robinson Crusoe books did Defoe write?

Defoe published three original Crusoe books: Robinson Crusoe, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and Serious Reflections. Only the first two are conventional continuing adventure narratives.

Should I read The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe?

Yes if you want Crusoe’s complete narrative. It is a genuine sequel and continues his travels after the first novel.

Is Serious Reflections necessary?

No for readers who only want narrative fiction. It is important for the complete original Crusoe sequence, but its purpose is primarily reflective rather than adventurous.

Is Moll Flanders connected to Robinson Crusoe?

No. Moll Flanders is a separate fictional life with its own protagonist and plot.

Is Roxana a sequel to Moll Flanders?

No. The novels share Defoe’s interest in fictional autobiography and precarious social lives, but the protagonists and stories are separate.

Is A Journal of the Plague Year a real diary?

No. It was published in 1722 and reconstructs the plague year of 1665 through a narrator presented with documentary realism. Defoe himself had been a young child during the historical epidemic.

Did Defoe definitely write every book attributed to him?

No. Defoe published anonymously and under varied circumstances, and attribution has been debated for many works. Older lists sometimes assign him books that modern scholars regard as uncertain or disputed.

The Best Daniel Defoe Reading Order

For most readers, start with Robinson Crusoe and continue directly to The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Add Serious Reflections afterward only if you want the complete original Crusoe cycle.

Defoe’s other major narratives, including Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, and Roxana, are standalone works. They can be chosen individually or read in publication order.

The main caution is bibliographic rather than chronological: Defoe’s enormous anonymous output has produced disputed attributions. A reliable reading list should keep uncertain titles clearly labeled instead of presenting every historical attribution as settled fact.