Defoe's most important innovation in fiction was his unprecedented and complete narrative realism. Robinson Crusoe itself was widely regarded as authentic at the time of publication, Defoe makes the claim that he, writing merely as "Editor," "believes the thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it."
This is not literally true. Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Crusoe would have been familiar to Defoe but the character is largely of Defoe's invention. He describes his characters with so much circumstantial detail that the reader can only conclude that things actually happened in just that way. This means that the reader begins to think the book not as fiction but sees it more as a historical statement.
The main aim of the writing is clearly to keep as close as possible to the consciousness of the narrator as he struggles to make the situation clear to himself and to us.
Defoe concentrates his description on the qualities of objects such as Crusoe’s first clay pot, his crudely fashioned fur garments, his umbrella, the boat, the grindstone. This use of highly descriptive language highlights the “realism” in the work and places Defoe among the great realist writers.
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