Robinson Crusoe

About This Book

First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) is one of the most widely read novels in history and a foundational work of English fiction. The story follows the sailor Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked on an uninhabited Caribbean island, where he survives for twenty-eight years through ingenuity, labor, and faith. He fashions tools, builds shelters, cultivates crops, and eventually encounters the man he names Friday, a native he rescues from cannibals. The novel was partly inspired by the real-life experience of the castaway Alexander Selkirk. It is often cited as the first English novel and has been continuously in print for over three centuries. Robinson Crusoe is in the public domain.

Excerpt

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.— Opening of Robinson Crusoe

What Critics Say

The true prototype of the British colonist.— James Joyce

The most felicitous treatise on natural education.— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile

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