RougeUnderoos selects Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe in the "pre 20th century category"
From Wiki (well known as the best source for literary criticism in the history of the world)
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, encountering Native Americans, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document" and gives a realistic frame story.
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I just read this for the first time last summer. Some parts I thought were unintentionally funny (he was always worried about "being devour'd by beasts" at the start).
The story is good, but the old-timey-time language really sold it to me. It just sounds cool. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, you want to talk like he does. I finished the book and then started again on the first page.
Here's a passage...
On the first of September 1651 I went on Board a Ship bound for London; never any young Adventurer's Misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine. The Ship was no sooner gotten out of the Humber, but the Wind began to blow, and the Winds' to rise in a most frightful manner; and as I had never been at Sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in Body, and terrify'd in my Mind: I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the Judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my Father's House, and abandoning my Duty; all the good Counsel of my Parents, my Father's Tears and my Mother's Entreaties came now fresh into my Mind, and my Conscience, which was not yet come to the Pitch of Hardness to which it has been since, reproach'd me with the Contempt of Advice, and the Breach of my Duty to God and my Father.