Robinson Crusoe: 300th Anniversary Edition

By Daniel Defoe, Eko and Jamaica Kincaid

Restless Classics presents the Three-Hundredth Anniversary Edition of Robinson Crusoe, the classic Caribbean adventure story and foundational English novel, with new illustrations by Eko and an introduction by Jamaica Kincaid that contextualizes the book for our globalized, postcolonial era.

Three centuries after Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe, this gripping tale of a castaway who spends thirty years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being ultimately rescued, remains a classic of the adventure genre and is widely considered the first great English novel.

But the book also has much to teach us, in retrospect, about entrenched attitudes of colonizers toward the colonized that still resound today. As celebrated Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid writes in her bold new introduction, “The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European, which is to say white, identity, has played in the long, uninterrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or ignored or silenced.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Restless Books
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781632061201

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was an English author, journalist, merchant and secret agent. His career in business was varied, with substantial success countered by enough debt to warrant his arrest. Political pamphleteering also landed Defoe in prison but, in a novelistic turn of events, an Earl helped free him on the condition that he become an intelligence agent. The author wrote widely on many topics, including politics, travel, and proper manners, but his novels, especially Robinson Crusoe, remain his best remembered work.

Book preview

Praise for

Robinson Crusoe

"[Robinson Crusoe] is a masterpiece, and it is a masterpiece largely because Defoe has throughout kept consistently to his own sense of perspective … . The mere suggestion—peril and solitude and a desert island—is enough to rouse in us the expectation of some far land on the limits of the world; of the sun rising and the sun setting; of man, isolated from his kind, brooding alone upon the nature of society and the strange ways of men."

—Virginia Woolf

Like Odysseus embarked for Ithaca, like Quixote mounted on Rocinante, Robinson Crusoe with his parrot and umbrella has become a figure in the collective consciousness of the West, transcending the book which—in its multitude of editions, translations, imitations, and adaptations (‘Robinsonades’)—celebrates his adventures. Having pretended once to belong to history, he finds himself in the sphere of myth.

—J. M. Coetzee

Robinson Crusoe, the first capitalist hero, is a self-made man who accepts objective reality and then fashions it to his needs through the work ethic, common sense, resilience, technology, and, if need be, racism and imperialism.

—Carlos Fuentes

"I thought it that Robinson Crusoe should be the only instance of a universally popular book that could make no one laugh and could make no one cry … . I will venture to say that there is not in literature a more surprising instance of utter want of tenderness and sentiment, than the death of Friday."

—Charles Dickens

"Was there every anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress?"

—Samuel Johnson

Contents

Introduction by Jamaica Kincaid

Artist’s Statement

Chronology

Robinson Crusoe

Start in Life

Slavery and Escape

Wrecked on a Desert Island

First Weeks on the Island

Builds a House—The Journal

Ill and Conscience-Stricken

Agricultural Experience

Surveys His Position

A Boat

Tames Goats

Finds Print of Man’s Foot on the Sand

A Cave Retreat

Wreck of a Spanish Ship

A Dream Realised

Friday’s Education

Rescue of Prisoners from Cannibals

Visit of Mutineers

The Ship Recovered

Return to England

Fight Between Friday and a Bear

A Guide for Restless Readers

Suggestions for Further Reading

‌

Introduction

The true symbol of British conquest is Robinson Crusoe, who, cast away on a desert island, in his pocket a knife and a pipe, becomes an architect, a carpenter, a knife-grinder, an astronomer, a baker, a shipwright, a potter, a saddler, a farmer, a tailor, an umbrella-maker, and a clergyman. He is the true prototype of the British colonist, as Friday (the trusty slave who arrives on an unlucky day) is the symbol of the subject races. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence; the unconscious cruelty; the persistence; the slow yet efficient intelligence; the sexual apathy; the practical, well-balanced religiousness; the calculating taciturnity.

—James Joyce

Dear Mr. Crusoe,

Please stay home. There’s no need for this ruse of going on a trading journey, in which more often than not the goods you are trading are people like me, Friday. There’s no need at all to leave your nice bed and your nice wife and your nice children (everything with you is always nice, except you yourself are not) and hop on a ship that is going to be wrecked in a storm at night (storms like the dark) and everyone (not the cat, not the dog) gets lost at sea except lucky and not nice at all you, and you are near an island that you see in the first light of day and then your life, your real life, begins. That life in Europe was nice, just nice; this life you first see at the crack of dawn is the beginning of your new birth, your new beginning, the way in which you will come to know yourself—not the conniving, delusional thief that you really are, but who you believe you really are, a virtuous man who can survive all alone in the world of a little godforsaken island. All well and good, but why did you not just live out your life in this place, why did you feel the need to introduce me, Friday (and I will come to that name), into this phony account of your virtues and your survival instincts? Keep telling yourself geography is history and that it makes history, not that geography is the nightmare that history recounts.

Perhaps it is a mistake to ask someone like me, a Friday if there ever was one, a Friday in all but name, to write an introduction to this much loved and admired classic, this book that seems to offer each generation who reads it, sometimes when a child and sometimes as an adult who becomes a child when reading it, the thrill of the adventure of a man being lost at sea, then finding safety on an island that seems to be occupied by nobody, and then making a world that is very nourishing to him physically and spiritually.

I was a ravenous reader as a child. I read the King James version of the Bible so many times that I even came to have opinions early on about certain parts of it (I thought of the Apostle Paul as a tyrant and the New Testament as too much about individuals and not enough about the people); I read everything I could find in the children’s section of the Antigua Public Library, situated on a whole floor just above the Treasury Department. If there was something diabolical or cynical in that arrangement, I never found it, but if it does turn out to be so, I will not be at all surprised. Among the many things that would haunt me were these three books: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley, and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Yes, yes, my early education consisted largely of ignoring that native Europeans were an immoral, repulsive people who were ignorant of most of the other people inhabiting this wonderful earth. Also, they were very good writers, that was true enough.

What made a native of Europe, less than two hundred years after Christopher Columbus wandered into the mid-Atlantic Ocean (where he found a paradise and proceeded to undo it), imagine himself alone on an island far away from his home? Had his world, the world of Europe, become so burdensome to him, and the presence of all those new people and the things to be done to them in their New World become so overwhelmingly burdensome that all alone became a heaven and a haven, a metaphor for becoming a new person, a perfect person? What makes such a person imagine himself (for it would be a him) the only survivor of a catastrophe at sea, and finding himself alone on an unknown island (unknown to him) construct a self that is self-assured, complete, and reasonable (within such boundaries), assured of his place in the order of things, in command of the order of things? For there are no real moments of doubt in this narrative that all will be well, or that he will emerge from this catastrophe enhanced in all the ways his enhancement requires.

Alone is always accompanied by loneliness, at least if you are an English person of a certain time. There doesn’t seem to be a single one of them who does not need a companion. Somebody has to polish his shoes or make her tea or at least listen to tales of things the listener will never know. An English person of a certain time must have a Friday. Christopher Columbus ambled into the Caribbean archipelago on a Thursday in October 1492. He met people who seemed to look remarkably like Friday. Columbus immediately began to make a detailed list of their physical appearance and their ways (they were so amiable, even their dogs didn’t bark) and immediately judged them beneath him: Columbus gave a man a sword; the man, having never seen a sword before, held it by the blade.

So just how did Daniel Defoe conceive of a parable for the 1492 adventure? What if Christopher Columbus and his gang of hardened criminals and hard-hearted adventurers had arrived in the Antilles and found themselves stranded with no way of going back from whence they came? Would Columbus then have been a refugee dependent on the kindness of these strangers? Crusoe though is that rare kind of refugee: the refugee who is not suffering from hardship of the usual kind attached to a refugee—economic hardship, political persecution; he is having an existential crisis, a crisis seemingly known only to the privileged person from Europe and which comes along with The Enlightenment. You know who doesn’t have such a crisis? A person living quite comfortably in a climate that is called paradisaical, where she has no need for much clothing and not far away in the background is a jungle, not a forest.

Ennui, a domesticated, localized version of an existential crisis, is not for the Fridays of this world. We are vulnerable to the insane needs and greed of that Other, that native of Europe; we have our flaws, but so far we Fridays, when we are spoken of, are not regarded as part of the vast array of human experience, we are regarded as wanting, as lacking, as illegitimate forms of the human family, as forms of Being meant to tend sugar cane and reap cotton, mastering the role of performing in perpetuity the Other, the Other that is always lacking in full form and dignity that is the human condition.

The vivid, vibrant, subtle, important role of the tale of Robinson Crusoe, with his triumph of individual resilience and ingenuity wrapped up in his European—which is to say white—identity, has played in the long, uninterrupted literature of European conquest of the rest of the world must not be dismissed or ignored or silenced. Quite the opposite: it is evidence of the ignorance, the absence of moral knowledge and feeling, the realization once again that the people who lay claim to the Enlightenment needed enlightenment and that the rest of us were perfectly okay and that because of them we are in search of something that some of us already knew: when confronted with a sword, accept it by the blade, for the handle only leads to more blades, and more blades and better blades that await in the long run—and life is the long run—are of no use at all.

So dear Mr. Crusoe,

Please don’t come. Stay home and work things out; your soul, a property you value very much, will be better off for it.

Sincerely,

Jamaica Kincaid

‌

Artist’s Statement

Robinson Crusoe, Creation as an Island

Art is a journey with a point of no return, its borders are immeasurable and in the process of creation I have lost myself to find what I want to portray, what my drawing seeks. The story of Robinson Crusoe is a metaphor for existence. As an artist, he gets lost to find his essence, a shipwreck isolates him from the world, and in that rebirth he reaches the depths of himself. In the creation of an artwork I have shipwrecked many times, I have destroyed thousands of drawings that disappear in the oceans of black ink like the fragments of a ship, and from those setbacks, a work of art arises. In each new drawing I lock myself in an island, the blank paper is an unknown and desert terrain, I inhabit it as a destination, and I know that once conquered I have to undertake a different route, get lost, let my ship sink and reinvent my own drawing. For art, distances are nonexistent. It is an endless journey, with no notion of time, my work is my biography, I have no past other than the drawing I have finished, and I will not have a future outside of my notebook and my black ink. Art is for the castaways of reality, for those of us who can only live within invention and failure.

—Eko

‌

Chronology

1620s–1630s European privateers, traders, and settlers begin to establish permanent colonies and trading posts on the Caribbean islands neglected by Spain.

1660 Daniel Defoe, né Daniel Foe, is born (exact date unknown) to Presbyterian parents Alice and James Foe, likely in Fore Street in the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate, London. His father is a tallow chandler and a member of the Worshipful Company of Butchers. Britain and France sign a peace treaty, returning control of several colonized islands to the Caribs.

1671 Daniel Defoe attends the Rev. James Fisher’s boarding school in Pixham Lane in Dorking.

1674 Defoe attends a dissenting academy at Newington Green in London.

1684 Now an established merchant in London, Defoe marries Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a London merchant, receiving a significant dowry of £3,700.

1685 Defoe joins the ill-fated Monmouth Rebellion, an attempt to overthrow James II, the Duke of York. Defoe gains a pardon and escapes the Bloody Assizes, the infamous trials of Judge George Jeffreys. Henry Pitman, an employee of the Duke of Monmouth and an active participant in the Monmouth Rebellion, publishes a short book about his desperate escape from a Caribbean penal colony, followed by his shipwrecking and adventures on a deserted island. The book is published by J. Taylor of Paternoster Row, whose son William Taylor later publishes Defoe’s novel.

1688 Queen Mary and her husband William III are jointly crowned. Defoe becomes one of William’s close allies and a secret agent. Some of the new policies lead to conflict with France and damage trade relationships for British merchants, including Defoe.

1692 Defoe is arrested for debts and declares bankruptcy. Following his release, he travels in continental Europe and Scotland.

1695 Back in England, Defoe begins to use the aristocratic-sounding De in his last name and serves as a commissioner of the glass duty, responsible for collecting taxes on bottles.

1697 Defoe publishes his first notable work, An Essay Upon Projects, a series of proposals for social and economic improvement.

1701 The True-Born Englishman, Defoe’s most successful poem, defends the king against his enemies and satirizes the English claim to racial purity.

1702 The death of William III and the succession of Queen Anne creates political upheaval. Defoe’s pamphlet entitled The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church argues for the extermination of the Dissenters and those who practice occasional conformity.

1703 A natural target to Queen Anne’s offensive against Nonconformists, Defoe is arrested and placed in a pillory on July 31 and is charged with seditious libel. He is released in exchange for his cooperation as an intelligence agent for the Tories. In November, Defoe witnesses the Great Storm in London.

1704 Defoe publishes The Storm, which documents the events of 1703 and includes a collection of witness accounts of the tempest. He also begins his periodical A Review of the Affairs of France, which supports the Harley Ministry and chronicles the events of the War of the Spanish Succession. It becomes the main mouthpiece of the English government promoting the Act of Union 1707, which unites the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland into one kingdom by the name of Great Britain.

1705 Defoe’s pamphlet entitled A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal the Next Day after her Death to One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury the 8th of September, 1705 is published anonymously. It deals with interaction between the spiritual and the physical realms.

1709 Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer, survives his ordeal as a castaway and receives a great deal of public attention in England. He spent four years on an uninhabited island called Más a Tierra in the South Pacific Ocean. Defoe authors a book entitled The History of the Union of Great Britain, which attempts to explain the facts leading up to the 1707 Act of Union.

1712 Edward Cooke, fellow crew member of Alexander Selkirk, mentions the castaway’s ordeal in a book chronicling their privateering expedition, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World.

1715 Defoe publishes The Family Instructor, a conduct manual on religious duty, as well as his apologia Appeal to Honour and Justice, a defence of his part in Harley’s Tory ministry.

1717 Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager at the Court of England is published. In this work, Defoe impersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, a series of individual peace treaties signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession.

1718 Defoe publishes A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, a satire of European politics and religion.

1719 Robinson Crusoe is published on April 25. Within a year, this first volume runs through four editions and is translated into French, German, and Dutch. Later in the year Defoe writes a lesser-known sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Imitating Defoe, Ambrose Evans publishes The Adventures and Surprising Deliverances of James Dubourdieu and His Wife, which tells the story of a shipwrecked couple on a desert island named Paradise.

1720 The third and last book of the Robinson Crusoe series, Serious Reflections During the Life & Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With His Vision of the Angelick World is published.

1721 Penelope Aubin writes The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil and His Family, a novel that tells the story of a family shipwrecked on an uninhabited island named Delos. Soon she becomes one of the most productive imitators of Defoe’s works.

1722 Defoe’s Colonel Jack is published. The story follows an orphaned boy from a life of poverty to colonial prosperity.

1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a prose satire on human nature and the travelers’ tales literary subgenre, is published. Defoe publishes The Complete English Tradesman and makes use of his Scottish experience to write his Tour thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain, in which he provides a survey of British trade on the eve of the Industrial Revolution.

1731 Daniel Defoe dies on April 24, likely while hiding from his creditors. He is interred in Bunhill Fields, Islington, London. German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel coins the word robinsonade in the Preface of his work Die Insel Felsenburg (The Island Stronghold), describing a subgenre of survivalist fiction similar to Robinson Crusoe.

1763 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatise on education, Emile, or On Education, is published in English. The protagonist is only allowed to read Robinson Crusoe before the age of twelve and attempts to imitate Crusoe’s experience.

1788 Britain passes the Slave Trade Act (Dolben’s Act), limiting the number of slaves transported on British ships.

1794 France decrees the abolition of slavery both in France and in colonized territories.

1801 Toussaint Louverture leads the Haitian Revolution, drawing up the Constitution of 1801 which gives him authoritarian control of Hispaniola.

1802 Napoléon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in many French territories.

1812 Swiss author Johann David Wyss writes The Swiss Family Robinson, a novel about a family shipwrecked in the East Indies en route to Port Jackson, Australia.

1833–34 Britain fully abolishes slavery and the slave trade, introducing the practice of indentured apprenticeships.

1848 Slavery is abolished in Danish islands. France re-abolishes slavery in colonies.

1870 A monument is erected in Bunhill Fields, honoring Defoe’s memory.

1883 In his novel Treasure Island, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson parodies Crusoe with the character of Ben Gunn.

1930 Beatrix Potter’s children’s’ book The Tale of Little Pig Robinson is published. The author directs the reader to Robinson Crusoe for a detailed description of the island (the land of the Bong tree) to which her eponymous hero moves.

1954 Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel directs Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. An American film adaptation named Miss Robin Crusoe features a female castaway and female Friday.

1966 Walt Disney adapts the novel into the comedic film Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N., featuring a female Friday named Wednesday. Más a Tierra, the second largest of the Juan Fernández Islands in Chile and home to the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk in the early eighteenth century, is renamed Robinson Crusoe Island.

1967 French novelist Michel Tournier publishes Friday, or, The Other Island (French Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique), retelling the story of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe story. Tournier’s Crusoe rejects civilization when he has an opportunity to escape the island.

1971 Crusoe in England, a long poem by American writer Elizabeth Bishop, is published in the New York Times. The poem imagines Crusoe later in life as he reflects on his past adventure.

1986 South African writer J. M. Coetzee’s novel Foe retells the story of Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of a woman named Susan Barton.

1997 A new American adaptation named Robinson Crusoe stars actor Pierce Brosnan.

2000 American film Cast Away features Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an island for several years, using the major themes of the Robinson Crusoe narrative.

2019 Robinson Crusoe, a major contender for the first English novel and translated into over a hundred languages, celebrates its three hundredth anniversary globally.

Robinson Crusoe‌

‌

Start in Life

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. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our name—Crusoe; and so my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.

Being the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father’s house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing—viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.

After this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which nature, and the station of life I was born in, seemed to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had just been recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it; and that he should have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away; and to close all, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.

I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself—I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed: and that when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more to me.

I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed, who could be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to my father’s desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father’s further importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as the first heat of my resolution prompted; but I took my mother at a time when I thought her a little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I did I should never serve out my time, but I should certainly run away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad, if I came home again, and did not like it, I would go no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to recover the time that I had lost.

This put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it.

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time; but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to London in his father’s ship, and prompting me to go with them with the common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God’s blessing or my father’s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father’s house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father’s tears and my mother’s entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and my father.

All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.

These wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm lasted, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was abated, and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it; however, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little sea-sick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.

I had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick, but very cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so little a time after. And now, lest my good resolutions should continue, my companion, who had enticed me away, comes to me; Well, Bob, says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, how do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wer’n’t you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind? A capful d’you call it? said I; ’twas a terrible storm. A storm, you fool you, replies he; do you call that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you’re but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we’ll forget all that; d’ye see what charming weather ’tis now? To make short this sad part of my story, we went the way of all sailors; the punch was made and I was made half drunk with it: and in that one night’s wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, all my resolutions for the future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits—for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I

Reviews for Robinson Crusoe

[haloedrain · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This should have been a book I really liked, but the overbearing narrative voice ruined it. And I say this as someone who has been reading and enjoying a lot of books with opinionated narrators lately.

Generally, when I read a novel I expect it to have a degree of personal growth (unless a lack of growth is the point of the story) and narrative tension. And this story *should* have had both of those. Certainly, the protagonist finds God and humility over the course of the novel, but the narration spends the entire book lamenting that he didn't trust to providence, etc., etc. (at length, every few pages, so you don't miss it...) that the personality he had at the beginning is totally absent, overridden by who he becomes by the end. And the way it's written it just seams so *easy* for him to survive--certainly, he must have had problems, but those are mostly glossed over, he has a whole ship full of stuff, and he routinely points out how something he did early on would be useful later, so when the problem does come up you already know it's solved.

And if the protagonist barely has a personality, no one else has any personality at all. And you might think, well, yeah, he spends the whole book alone on an island--but no! Quite a bit of the book isn't on the island, or otherwise there are other people around. But they just waft on and off-stage with no real effect. Friday is more of a person than anyone else, but he's such a caricature that I feel like he hardly counts. Oh, and the narrator mentions that he got married and had three kids and his wife died, all in one sentence, and goes on with the narration like nothing remarkable happened, and did these people mean nothing to you?

Ugh. And even though he keeps belaboring the religious lesson over and over, it isn't even a good sermon, because good rhetoric has roots in good story and personal development.

Anyway, I think what I'm saying here is you'd be better off spending your time reading a wilderness survival manual while singing Amazing Grace over and over again.

[karenduff · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

What I learned from this book is that not every book that is called a classic earns that title.If this hadn't been on my Feb bookshelf then I wouldn't have finished it.

I know this is regarded as the first english language novel but that doesn't excuse the fact that it is badly written.

Robinson Crusoe is a complete and utter idiot, he never learns from his mistakes and never takes advice from anybody. Maybe it's just me but if the very first ship you are on sinks perhaps you should take it as a sign, but not him off he goes again and ends up as a slave. He escapes and is rescued by a too good to be true captain and makes a good life for himself in Brazil, but even then that is not enough. So when some of his friends decide they want more slaves he is selected to make the trip to buy them and of course being Robinson the ship is struck by a hurricane while in the Carribean. Sounds bad so far doesn't it and it only gets worse.

I know that I shouldn't complain about the attitude towards slavery in the book as it was a different time period and it is historically accurate but I just found it really hard to stomach, in fact it made me wish that Friday had been a cannibal.

I have read this book before but I was about ten and you don't really pick up on the racism and all the other things that are wrong with this book at that age. Then you just think about the adventure of being on a desert island. The reason I read this again is because a few weeks ago I was having dinner with my Mum and she was watching what I thought was I very bad adaptation. Turns out it was the source material that was the problem and based on that there was no way you could ever make a good version.

[flydodofly · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My absolute favourite as a child

[jguidry-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

When I started this book, I was expecting a story about survival. I expected to hear about wild adventures and man vs. nature. I got a little of that. But, mostly I got a whiny narrator who complained bitterly about how lonely he was and how he wanted a companion. Turns out, he really just wanted a servant. I couldn't get into the story at all, I didn't like the main character (not even enough to feel a little sorry for him) and I really wasn't impressed by the ending. This was a slight disappointment for me.

[trasfavoritepastime · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

To say I hated this book is probably the understatement of the century. In fact, I'm only halfway through the book after six years! I just can't seem to bring myself to buckle down and finish it mainly because the main character is a whiny pompous ass who is just plain dislikeable. I should probably donate this book, but there is still this little part of me that insists on finishing it, although that will most likely never happen.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The legend of Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday are elaborated in the novel and one can understand the appeal. The audiobook is also nicely done.

[becalee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Terrible classic. Don't bother.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Zeer onderhoudend, zelfs na 3 eeuwen. Verrassende spirituele link: vergelijking met Job (beschouwingen over de voorzienigheid). Uniek thema: de nobele wilde, zelfs de kannibalen.

[scaryguy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Timeless classic!

[pamici_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Started out quite interesting - then made the mistake of reading the historical basis for the story before finishing (Selkirk's Island). With the illusion shattered, I couldn't get back to the adventure with any gusto. :(

[stevetempo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Four stars on the strength of it's historical/classical significance...I read an abbreviated version as a young boy....enjoyed it much then...I thank I liked the adventure story of a very competent person...in this reading Defoe's religious themes were more in site...took a long time to get through.

[britt84 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really love this novel; just read it for the third time and very much enjoyed reading it again.The tale of Robinson Crusoe, who needs to survive on an island after having been shipwrecked, is a story that is familiar to most of us. Defoe's story is gripping, imaginative, and shows a great sense for detail and description. The book is written from Crusoe's point of view and uses a simple type of language, which fits very well with the story.Though I am not a religious person myself and find Crusoe's religious thoughts a bit much at times, I guess this type of ideas about the omnipotence of God and the role of providence in our lives were common in the early 18th century, and I never found it too annoying. I think many modern readers will profit from considering his ideas. Though I do not necessarily feel we should give thanks to God for everything, I do think it is true that many people are very preoccupied with what they lack, in stead of being happy with the things they have. Crusoe teaches us that it is important to be happy with what we have, and to be grateful for those things, because our situation could easily have been worse.

[donagiles · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Much talk to tell a story, gets boreing , sometimes temped to skip. Which I am loath to do as I figure something has to be interesting soon and then would miss only thing making the read worth while. But this guy is a suffer to read.

[cheapregrets · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Being banished from civilization because of what it seemed to be a curse, Robinson tried to build everything again in a very distant little world, the island. His path to the freedom is described in this book in which Robinson tell us his completely accidented life.
When you think that solitude is the worst enemy... think again. Maybe the island is not as uninhabited as it seems.
Tales of land and sea danger. Reflections about the man being away of his civilization. Madness and sanity.

[alcracka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Robinson Crusoe, a suicidal businessman with sociopathic tendencies, obsessively tries to recreate society when he's shipwrecked. He grows increasingly paranoid; by the time he finally reunites with another human, he's murderously insane.

[seraphinac.b4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In "Robinson Crusoe", Robinson disobeys his father's wishes and goes with the sea. The boat is shipwrecked and he is the only one who survives. He makes a home on an island, which is surprisingly beast free. Robinson raises goats for meat and company. He also goes out frequently to get grapes for raisins. Cannibals from another island capture a merchant ship and come over to his island for the sacrifice. Robinson is able to rescue the sailors and get them to take him back to a real home. This book was very descriptive. The plot was somewhat predictable. I would recommend this book. This book seems like someone actually wrote this on an island. It was very real. Some places in the book were boring because everyday did not have action. Overall, I would not like to read this book again.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I don't remember reading this book, though it's obvious I have -- the spine is bent, and I'm the only one who's ever owned it. It obviously left no impression on me. It might be something I'd pick up in the future and try again.

[borhap-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

i so longed for my own deserted island after reading this

[nialle-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Started rereading this as a refresher before I pick up Foe - and wow, is it a different book now. When I was a kid, I read this at the crux between my nautical fiction craze and my self-sufficiency craze, so naturally the seagoing and the invention with which Crusoe builds his encampment interested me most. This time around, though, I'm fascinated by his descriptions of living with and without fear of different varieties, and by what is middle-class and middle-aged about those fears. Very different. Hm.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I didn't think I really needed to read this book. After all the plot line is pretty well known and the survival story of being stuck on a desert island has been repeated in many other books as well as used multiple times in Hollywood blockbusters. And somehow I was under the impression that when Crusoe discovers another human being on this island the phrase 'Thank God it's Friday' was uttered and became a standard phrase to express the end of a long week as well as a chain restaurant (that last part I don't think is true, or at least I missed the line when reading the book).

But this book is definitely worth reading. It is the original castaway story and I found it easy to read, very exciting, and was surprised to realize that many of my assumptions about the story were wrong. I loved the ingenuity that Crusoe employed in surviving from capturing and taming wild goats to devising methods of shelter. But the biggest surprise was the inner dialog and philosophy scattered throughout the book. Crusoe was one of the earliest practitioners of keeping a gratitude journal. Rather than moaning and complaining about being stuck on an island and the only survivor, he was grateful for the few good things he had.

The book definitely exhibits some pretty strong racial prejudices. Although it would not be acceptable today, it seemed to reflect the time that it was written.

Surprisingly good book to read!

[thesmellofbooks · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What an aggravating book. Chilling in its blithe acceptance of slavery and exploitation for personal gain, though of course this is not out of sync with the times in which it was written. Even put in context, though, it is hard to sympathize with this character beyond an admiration for his industry and compassion for anyone who is suffering, no matter how morally afflicted a fellow he may be. The racism is thick and irksome, from his descriptions of skin tone outward, and his "improvements" on the "savage" he saves and then dominates are of the sort justifiably decried in countless modern books on slavery, racism, and colonization.It is also astonishingly boring. I have a higher level of patience than most for characters noodling around doing nothing much of interest in order to set the scene, but egads. I am gobsmacked that this book is still published and recommended for children. It must be seriously rewritten in their versions. Yikes.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Published in 1719 and certainly a classic adventure story, but its inconsistencies don’t stand up to much scrutiny, and it isn’t particularly well written. The main inspiration for the tale was the true story of Alexander Selkirk, who had been left for four years on an uninhabited island after arguing with his captain, then rescued, and his story told in 1712. Defoe expanded on this of course, among other things stranding Crusoe for 28 years, and having him meet ‘Friday’, an aboriginal who he then (ugh) made a servant and converted to the ‘True God’. Friday is not treated as a person, he’s more like other ‘material’ Crusoe finds, but this was par for the course at this time in history.Aside from the adventure story, Defoe was exploring man’s nature and his reaction to adversity, topics larger than the story itself. In one scene, Crusoe lists ‘evil’ aspects to his condition (‘I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all hope of recovery’), and corresponding good aspects (‘But I am alive, and not drown’d as all my ship’s company was’). I don’t think there was anything particularly insightful here, though the struggle for survival and events like finding the footprint are iconic and lasting images.Quotes:On accepting fate:“I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed, rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them; because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”And:“These reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say, “Is there any affliction like mine!” Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit.”On money:“He told me that it was for men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortune on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me, or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labor and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind.”On religion:“I had rather be delivered up to the savages, and be devoured alive, than fall into the merciless claws of the priests, and be carried into the Inquisition.”On youth:“...how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases, viz. that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed for the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.”

[santhony_35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. This was the third novel I’ve completed (the first two being A Tale of Two Cities and Around the World in 80 Days) and like the first two, the reader did not detract from the experience, and was in fact quite good.Robinson Crusoe was written in the 17th century by Daniel DeFoe and is one of the oldest novels written in the English language. Despite this, it is not difficult to read (or listen to) in the least. While there are a few affectations and instances of unfamiliar “period” language and references, I never found this to be a problem.The story is well known; an English mariner becomes shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island for many years, ultimately joined by his man Friday (a local native). The novel however, begins far sooner and spends some time detailing Crusoe’s early life and adventures. A good 75% of the story, however, takes place on the island, located off the coast of South America near the mouth of the Orinoco River.Luckily, Crusoe is not completely without provisions or means of survival and the “eight and twenty” years he spends on the island are filled with his ingenuity and seemingly never ending industry in making his abode not only livable but comfortably so. This is very much a period piece with religion playing a not insignificant role, though not overbearingly so. It is, more than anything, quite entertaining and even enlightening. I must confess being somewhat pleasantly surprised that such an old work played so well in current times.

[crashmyparty · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

For what was supposed to be the classic shipwreck story I couldn't help but be disappointed by Robinson Crusoe. It may have been the language of the time, but I found the story to be slow and frankly a little boring. It seemed to be a lot of lists of things that Crusoe was doing or accumulating or learning. And for someone who spent so long alone on an island, I would have thought that he would have gone at least a little bit crazy! 

[la2bkk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is obviously a must read for any fan of classic literature.Defoe's writing style is generally quite user friendly given he wrote in the early 1700s. On one level, Robinson Crusoe is a compelling story about what one man must do to survive without the most basic of necessities. It is a testament to the human spirit in the face of adversity. On another level, the book concerns a common man's coming to religion and learning to appreciate what really in matters in life.My only reservation is that the final few chapters seemed out of character with the majority of the book, and in my opinion were unnecessary to the story.

[katttsu · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story is very terrific!!!I cannot imagine that I live alone in island for many years.If I were him, I would want to die because of terror, loneliness, andanxiety.I was moved by friendship between them.

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've been on a bit of a classic novel kick lately and this book may be the end of it for a little while. It was not bad, but there was a lot of potential in this novel that was left undeveloped. Robinson Crusoe is a story most know, the tale of a man stranded on a deserted island for years. While a fascinating story, I found Robinson Crusoe's interactions with the natives who sometime visited the island the most frustrating part of the tale. True to European stereotypes, these natives are cannibals. Furthermore, after rescuing one of their intended victims, a man who becomes his servant Friday, Robinson Crusoe proceeds to convert this man to Christianity. All in all, this classic novel tells one a great deal about the prejudices of the time it was written in.

[clueless_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book blew me away! I was amazed how relevant it was to present time. It was not dusty/stuffy at all. I guess I was expecting Swiss Family Robinson or something. Instead I got this wonderful story of a man wrestling with his faith. Way.Cool.

[crewman_number_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I just reread this book, and it is amazing to me that it is as relevant today as it was when it was written in the late 1600's! I think sometimes people are expecting this to be an adventure story, but truly it is the theme "man vs. himself." Robinson Crusoe has to come to grips with the fact that his choices got him to the point he was in life, good or bad. Loved it.

[whatthedickens_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although tedious at times, I found this book to be a captivating adventure. With allowances made for the time period the book was written, this book is a rather straighforward and intriguing adventure. It does get repetitive at times and bogs down with the detail of the drudgery of Crusoe's solitary life on the island, but perhaps that just give's one a sense of how monotonous and slowly life would pass if one were walking in Robinson Crusoe's shoes.