Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. It was published under the considerably longer original title The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)-a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived to have been influenced by the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on the Pacific island called Mas a Tierra (in 1966 its name was changed to Robinson Crusoe Island), Chile. However, other possible sources have been put forward for the text. It is possible, for example, that Defoe was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, an earlier novel also set on a desert island. Another source for Defoe's novel may have been Robert Knox's account of his abduction by the King of Ceylon in 1659 in An Historical Account of the Island Ceylon, Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons (Publishers to the University), 1911.

Michael Shinagel received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he is Senior Lecturer on English and Dean of Continuing Education and University Extension. He has also taught at Cornell University and Union College. He is the author of Daniel Defoe and Middle-Class Gentility, editor of A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan Swift, and co-editor of Harvard Scholars in English, 1890-1990. His articles and reviews have appeared in various scholarly journals.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780393964523
ISBN 10	0393964523
Title	Robinson Crusoe
Author	Daniel Defoe
Series	Norton Critical Editions
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	1994-02-23
Number of pages	448
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.