Read complete books and articles on: Robinson Crusoe

Defoe, Daniel - dĭfōˈ, 1660?–1731, English writer, b. London.

Early Life and Works

Defoe, Daniel - dĭfōˈ, 1660?–1731, English writer, b. London.

Early Life and Works

The son of a London butcher, and educated at a Dissenters' academy, he was typical of the new kind of man reaching prominence in England in the 18th cent.—self-reliant, industrious, possessing a strong notion of personal and moral responsibility. Although intended for the Presbyterian ministry, he had by 1683 set himself up as a merchant dealing in many different commodities. In spite of his own considerable savings and his wife's dowry, Defoe went bankrupt in 1692. Although he paid his creditors, he was never entirely free from debt again.

Defoe's first important publication was An Essay upon Projects (1698), but it was not until the poem The True-born Englishman (1701), a defense of William III from his attackers, that he received any real fame. An ill-timed satire early in Queen Anne's reign, The Shortest Way with Dissenters (1702), an ironic defense of High Church animosity against nonconformists, resulted in Defoe's being imprisoned. He was rescued by Robert Harley and subsequently served the statesman as a political agent.

Defoe has been called the father of modern journalism; during his lifetime he was associated with 26 periodicals. From 1704 to 1713 he published and wrote a Review, a miscellaneous journal concerned with the affairs of Europe; this was an incredibly ambitious undertaking for one man.

Defoe the Novelist

He was nearly sixty when he turned to writing novels. In 1719 he published his famous Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed by two less engrossing sequels. Based in part on the experiences of Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe describes the daily life of a man marooned on a desert island. Although there are exciting episodes in the novel—Crusoe rescuing his man Friday from cannibals—its main interest derives from the way in which Crusoe overcomes the extraordinary difficulties of life on the island while preserving his human integrity. Robinson Crusoe is considered by some critics to be the first true novel in English.

Defoe's great novels were not published under his name but as authentic memoirs, with the intention of gulling his readers into thinking his fictions true. Two excellent examples of his semihistorical recreations are the picaresque adventure Moll Flanders (1722), the story of a London prostitute and thief, and an account of the 1665 great plague in London entitled A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).

Defoe's writing is always straightforward and vivid, with an astonishing concern for circumstantial detail. His other major works include Captain Singleton (1720), Colonel Jack (1722), Roxana (1724), and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27). In 1724 A General History of the Pyrates by a Captain Charles Johnson was published; it was not until 200 years later that Defoe was discovered to be the true author of the work (see edition by Manuel Schonhorn, 1972).

Bibliography

See Defoe's letters, ed. by G. H. Healey (1955); biographies by J. R. Sutherland (2d ed. 1950), J. R. Moore (1958), and J. Richetti (1987); studies by G. H. Starr (1965 and 1971), J. R. Sutherland (1971), P. Rogers, ed. (1972), L. A. Curtis (1984), and P. R. Backscheider (1986).

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11 of the Best Books and Articles on: Robinson Crusoe

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner » Read Now
by Daniel Defoe, J. Donald Crowley. 316 pgs.

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'It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceeding surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore, which was very plain to be seen in the Sand: I stood like one Thunder-struck ...' Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the most famous adventure stories ever written. The...
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'It happen'd one Day about Noon going towards my Boat, I was exceeding surpriz'd with the Print of a Man's naked Foot on the Shore, which was very plain to be seen in the Sand: I stood like one Thunder-struck ...' Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one of the most famous adventure stories ever written. The account of a sailor shipwrecked on a desert island for twenty-eight years, it is also a tale of mythic proportions, an allegory, and a spiritual autobiography.L
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2.

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 157 pgs.

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3.

In Search of Robinson Crusoe » Read Now
by Tim Severin. 333 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

With his signature approach to literary sleuthing, Tim Severin retraces the footsteps of castaways and pirates to discover the inspiration behind Daniel Defoe's brilliant creation, Robinson Crusoe. Insightful travel writing, riveting narrative history, and clever scholarly discoveries make this a...
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With his signature approach to literary sleuthing, Tim Severin retraces the footsteps of castaways and pirates to discover the inspiration behind Daniel Defoe's brilliant creation, Robinson Crusoe. Insightful travel writing, riveting narrative history, and clever scholarly discoveries make this a remarkably rich and varied book. Tim Severin has once again demonstrated a superb ability to bring together literature and adventure in an engrossing narrative.
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4.

The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (Chap. III "'Robinson Crusoe,' Individualism and the Novel") » Read Now
by Ian Watt. 319 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

Defoe and the Nature of Man (Chap. II "Robinson Crusoe and the State of Nature") » Read Now
by Maximillian E. Novak. 178 pgs.

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6.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property (Chap. Two "Terra Nullius, Cannibalism, and the Natural Law of Appropriation in Robinson Crusoe") » Read Now
by Wolfram Schmidgen. 266 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

In Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property, Wolfram Schmidgen draws on legal and economic writings to analyze the description of houses, landscapes, and commodities in eighteenth-century fiction. His study argues that such descriptions are important to the British imagination of...
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In Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property, Wolfram Schmidgen draws on legal and economic writings to analyze the description of houses, landscapes, and commodities in eighteenth-century fiction. His study argues that such descriptions are important to the British imagination of community. By making visible what it means to own something, they illuminate how competing concepts of property define the boundaries of the individual, of social community, and of political systems. In this way, Schmidgen recovers description as a major feature of eighteenth-century prose, and he makes his case across a wide range of authors, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, William Blackstone, Adam Smith, and Ann Radcliffe. The book's most incisive theoretical contribution lies in its careful insistence on the unity of the human and the material: in Schmidgen's argument, persons and things are inescapably entangled. This approach produces fresh insights into the relationship between law, literature, and economics.
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7.

Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Chap. 4 "Utopia Overseas: Robinson Crusoe; A General History of the Pyrates; Gaudentio di Lucca; Peter Wilkins") » Read Now
by Christine Rees. 296 pgs.

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This book combines 2 major areas of interest, interpreting some of the most fascinating & innovative fictions of the period & locating them in a continuing tradition of utopian writing which stretches back through the Renaissance to the Ancient World.
8.

Psychoanalysis, Language and the Body of the Text (Chap. 4 "Robinson Crusoe and the Vicissitudes of Greed: Cannibalism and Capitalism") » Read Now
by Martin Gliserman. 196 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Psychology, Entire Library
9.

Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire ("Robinson Crusoe" begins on p. 75) » Read Now
by Martin Green. 429 pgs.

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10.

Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Chap. 1 "Robinson Crusoe, Anthropology, and the Horizon of Technology") » Read Now
by Peter Redfield. 345 pgs.

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Rockets roar into space--bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites--from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. What makes "Space in the Tropics enthralling is anthropologist Peter Redfield's ability to draw from these two...
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Rockets roar into space--bearing roughly half the world's commercial satellites--from the same South American coastal rainforest where convicts once did time on infamous Devil's Island. What makes "Space in the Tropics enthralling is anthropologist Peter Redfield's ability to draw from these two disparate European projects in French Guiana a gleaming web of ideas about the intersections of nature and culture. In comparing the Franco-European Ariane rocket program with the earlier penal experiment, Redfield connects the myth of Robinson Crusoe, nineteenth-century prison reform, the Dreyfus Affair, tropical medicine, postwar exploration of outer space, satellite technology, development, and ecotourism with a focus on place, and the incorporation of this particular place into greater extended systems. Examining the wider context of the Ariane program, he argues that technology and nature must be understood within a greater ecology of displacement and makes a case for the importance of margins in understanding the trajectories of modern life.
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11.

The Last of the Race: The Growth of a Myth from Milton to Darwin (Chap. 3 "Towards the Last of the Race: Robinson Crusoe as Sole Survivor") » Read Now
by Fiona J. Stafford. 332 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

The perennial fascination with the end of the world has given rise to many "last men," from the ancient myths of Noah and Deucalion to contemporary stories of nuclear holocaust. This is an innovative and wide-ranging study of the myth of the "Last of the Race" as it develops in a range of literary...
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The perennial fascination with the end of the world has given rise to many "last men," from the ancient myths of Noah and Deucalion to contemporary stories of nuclear holocaust. This is an innovative and wide-ranging study of the myth of the "Last of the Race" as it develops in a range of literary and non-literary texts from the late seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries. Examinations of works by Milton, Burnet, Defoe, Ossian, Cowper, Wordsworth, Byron, Mary Shelley, Fenimore Cooper, Bulwer-Lytton, and Darwin combine to form an important account of the traces of this most resonant of cultural preoccupations, providing a distinguished contribution to cultural history as well as to literary studies.
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