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. amazon.com

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote desert island, encountering natives, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document", and gives a realistic frame story.

The story was probably influenced by the real-life events of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway marooned on a Pacific island: Alejandro Selkirk Island, Chile, for four years. (More news from wikipedia.org)

Download Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Pdf format, 695kb, 261pages.

Free eBook, published by Pennsylvania State University.

Download The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Also known as Robinson Crusoe II. Pdf format, 594kb, 220pages. Published by Pennsylvania State University.

Daniel Defoe: (born 1660, London, Eng. — died April 24, 1731, London) British novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist. A well-educated London merchant, he became an acute economic theorist and began to write eloquent, witty, often audacious tracts on public affairs.

A satire he published resulted in his being imprisoned in 1703, and his business collapsed. He traveled as a government secret agent while continuing to write prolifically. In 1704 – 13 he wrote practically single-handedly the periodical Review, a serious and forceful paper that influenced later essay periodicals such as The Spectator. His Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, 3 vol. (1724 – 26), followed several trips to Scotland. Late in life he turned to fiction.

He achieved literary immortality with the novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), which drew partly on memoirs of voyagers and castaways. He is also remembered for the vivid, picaresque Moll Flanders (1722); the nonfictional Journal of the Plague Year (1722), on the Great Plague in London in 1664 – 65; and Roxana (1724), a prototype of the modern novel.

For more information on Daniel Defoe, visit Britannica.com.

Useful Links:

• Robinson Crusoe, available at Project Gutenberg.
• Robinson Crusoe (London: W. Taylor, 1719)., commented text of the first edition, free at Editions Marteau.
• Free eBook of Robinson Crusoe RSS version.
• Free eBook of Robinson Crusoe with illustrations by N. C. Wyeth
• Free audiobook of Robinson Crusoe from Librivox
• Robinson Crusoe, told in words of one syllable, by Lucy Aikin (aka "Mary Godolphin") (1723-1764).
• http://www.digbib.org/Daniel_Defoe_1661/The_Further_Adventures_Of_Robinson_Crusoe The text of volume II.
• Chasing Crusoe, multimedia documentary explores the novel and real life history of Selkirk.

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