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Robinson Crusoe

Name: Robinson Crusoe
Price: 10.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Daniel Defoe
ISBN: 9780141439822

Paperback $10.00

Published on Apr 29, 2003 | 288 Pages

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$10.00

Published on Apr 29, 2003 | 288 Pages

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The original tale of a castaway struggling to survive on a remote desert island, and one of the first novels in English

The sole survivor of a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe is washed up on a desert island. In his journal he chronicles his daily battle to stay alive, as he conquers isolation, fashions shelter and clothes, enlists the help of a native islander who he names ‘Friday’, and fights off cannibals and mutineers. Written in an age of exploration and enterprise, it has been variously interpreted as an embodiment of British imperialist values, as a portrayal of ‘natural man’, or as a moral fable. But above all is a brilliant narrative, depicting Crusoe’s transformation from terrified survivor to self-sufficient master of an island. This edition contains a full chronology of Defoe’s life and times, explanatory notes, glossary and a critical introduction discussing Robinson Crusoe as a pioneering work of modern psychological realism.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

“Beyond the end of Robinson Crusoe is a new world of fiction. Even though it did not know itself to be a ‘novel,’ and even though there were books that we might now call ‘novels’ published before it, Robinson Crusoe has made itself into a prototype . . . Perhaps because of all the novels that we have read . . . the novelty of Defoe’s fiction is the more striking when we return to it. Here it is, at the beginning of things, with its final word reaching out into the future.” –from the Introduction by John Mullan

Author

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe was born Daniel Foe in London in 1660. It was perhaps inevitable that Defoe, an outspoken man, would become a political journalist. As a Puritan he believed God had given him a mission to print the truth, that is, to proselytize on religion and politics and, in fact, he became a prolific pamphleteer satirizing the hypocrisies of both Church and State. Defoe admired William III, and his poem The True-Born Englishman (1701) won him the king’s friendship. But an ill-timed satire on High Church extremists, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, published during Queen Anne’s reign, resulted in his being pilloried and imprisoned for seditious libel in 1703. At 59 Defoe turned to fiction, completing The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719), partly based on the saga of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor; Moll Flanders (1722); Colonel Jack (1722); A Journal of the Plague Year (1722); and Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress (1724).

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Robinson Crusoe

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Part of Penguin Clothbound Classics

By Daniel DefoeIntroduction by John RichettiEdited by John RichettiNotes by John Richetti

By Daniel DefoeCover Design or Artwork by Coralie Bickford-SmithIntroduction by John RichettiEdited by John RichettiNotes by John Richetti

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