Why is Daniel Defoe said to have written the first English novel with Robinson Crusoe?

Prior to the
publication of , novel-length works in English were rare. Most were
translations of texts from other languages, collections of essays, or rewritten works from years
before. Robinson Crusoe was unique in four ways: it was entirely original;
it was entirely fictional; it was very long; it was a tremendous success.

As
an entirely original and fictional work, Crusoe was...

href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_novel_in_English">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_novel_in_English
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe