Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

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Summary

This perennially popular book was cited by Karl Marx in Das Kapital to illustrate economic theory, but it is readers of all ages over the last 280 years who have given "Robinson Crusoe" its abiding position as a classic tale of adventure.

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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.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9781853260452
ISBN 10 1853260452
Title Robinson Crusoe
Author Daniel Defoe
Series Wordsworth Classics
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Year published 1992-05-05
Number of pages 272
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.