Robinson Crusoe

About the Book

September 1, 1651. With a passion and longing for the sea, Robinson Crusoe sets on a sea voyage, much against the wishes of his family, only to survive a shipwreck. But he doesn’t give up. And after a series of adventurous journeys, eight years later on the same day of September, Crusoe sets sail again. Caught in a sea storm, he is washed ashore on a deserted island after the shipwreck. The sole human survivor, along with a dog and two cats, Crusoe builds his life with whatever is available around, and begins to contemplate and consider his situation. “Evil: I am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery. Good: But I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship's company were.” Will his adventures end here, or is there more in store for him? Establishing realistic fiction as a literary genre, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is regarded as the first English novel. With simple characters and an exceptional interpretation of life, it went on to become a literary masterpiece. The novel has undergone various adaptions and continues to remain an epic.

About the Author
One of the significant founders of the English novel and a pioneer of economic journalism, Daniel Defoe was born in London, England, sometime around the year 1659-60, the exact date being uncertain. An Essay upon Projects (1697) was Defoe’s first publication. Defoe’s first work of fiction was Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719 when he was sixty, it was considered the first English novel. It established realistic fiction as a literary genre. Some of Defoe’s works published in rapid succession include Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720); Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722); Colonel Jacque (1722); A Journal of the Plague Year (1722); and Roxana (1724). Defoe breathed his last on April 24, 1731.