Fraud?

Last year, I read Great Exploration Hoaxes, a so-so book, where I learned about "Madagascar; or Robert Drury's Journal, during fifteen years captivity on that Island," which claims to be memoir of a shipwrecked sailor who, during his 15 years on Madagascar, completely forgot the English language. Achieving a small popularity in the early 18th century, the book was the sole primary resource detailing life in Madagaascar at that time. It was until the end of the 19th century that scholars began to argue the book was a fiction written by Daniel Defoe, inspired by a newspaper account of a Robert Drury who was lost at sea for 15 years but suspected of being a pirate. Those novels of Daniel Defoe's which are his most famous -- Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Journal of the Plague Year -- all pretend to be nonfiction memoirs. Robinson Crusoe is "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner ... Written by Himself." "Moll Flanders", too, is a false autobiography. Six years ago, a researcher authenticated much of the book and it is now believed to be the true journal of Robert Drury. A compromise-of-sorts between the believers and skeptics suggest that Defoe served as the often-referred-to editor of the book and perhaps wrote Drury's story with the man at his side.

More info at The Guardian and The Museum of Hoaxes.