Book

Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe

London, 1719

Read offline

Amazon Kindle

Literary Classic

Adventure story
Enlightenment

What It’s About

Desert Island Risks

Hearing the name “Robinson Crusoe” you probably think of a bearded man dressed in animal skins, roaming a lonesome island with his only companion Friday, a noble native who speaks like an innocent child. The myth of Robinson is a powerful one: Holiday clubs and whole islands are named after him, and there's probably not a single remote getaway location in the world that doesn't feature at least one Robinson bar, restaurant or tourist site. Ironically, the novel isn't about sweet idleness and restful recreation, at all, but about hard work and spiritual awakening. In his journalistic and deliberately edifying novel Daniel Dafoe tells the story of an industrious Englishman who beats all odds and builds a livelihood for himself from next to nothing – eventually recreating the civilization he left behind – possibly a rather too sobering thought for the cocktail sipping holiday-maker reclining beneath a coconut palm.

Summary

Fatherly Advice

Robinson Crusoe is born in 1632 in York, England. His father is a merchant with roots in the Hanseatic City of Bremen. He wants his son to take up law, so Robinson can live the comfortable life of the English middle classes – a life the father is convinced offers the most agreeable and gentle existence of all.

Robinson, however, has different plans. He wants to go to sea, a plan his father is dead set against: Only wealthy adventurers or poor devils with no other choice would go to sea, he says, and Robinson is neither of the two. He should be content with God's gifts to him, prophesying to his son that a great misfortune would befall him if he insisted on his plans.

At Sea and in Captivity

When a friend sails to London, nothing can stop Robinson: Without telling his parents he boards the ship – only to regret his decision soon thereafter. A terrible storm fills him with horror, something the crew fails to understand, since in their eyes it's nothing but “a capful of wind.” His fears abate, but then a much more violent storm sinks their ship, just a quarter of an hour after everybody on board has gotten...

About the Author

Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. His father James Foe – Daniel later added the “De” to his name to make it sound more distinguished – was a prosperous tallow chandler, who didn’t belong to the Church of England. Because of this Daniel, himself an ardent follower of Protestantism, couldn’t go to university. He gave up on his initial plan to become a Presbyterian minister and went into business as a general merchant. Before long he went bankrupt and accrued considerable debts that would accompany him for the rest of his life. In 1684, he married Mary Tuffley, the daughter of a rich merchant. She brought in a huge dowry and bore him eight children, six of whom survived. Defoe published several pamphlets calling for religious tolerance and social reforms. In 1702, he wrote a treatise attacking the Church of England, for which he was prosecuted and pilloried. According to legend, however, the common folk cheered and drank to his health, instead of hurling the customary abuses at him. In exchange for being released from prison, Defoe agreed to enlist as an intelligence agent for the English government. In the run-up to the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707, resulting in the single state of Great Britain, he traveled to Scotland to report on anti-Unionist activities and guarantee consent to the Union Act – a dangerous affair in the turbulent political atmosphere. Simultaneously, he worked as a journalist and, until 1713, published the newspaper The Review. At the ripe age of almost 60, he began writing novels. The first, Robinson Crusoe (1719) is his most famous, followed, among others, by Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720), The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722) and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). Daniel Defoe died in London on April 26, 1731.