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1719 · 364 pages
Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
Cast ashore on a remote island after a shipwreck, Robinson Crusoe must remake civilisation from driftwood and ingenuity: a shelter, a calendar, a farm, a faith. For twenty-eight years he keeps a ledger of his survival — and his soul.
Often called the first English novel, Defoe's 1719 narrative reads with startling modernity. It is a manual of self-reliance, a spiritual reckoning, and the template for every castaway story from Swiss Family Robinson to Cast Away.
Our edition restores the rhythm of Defoe's prose for the digital page, with clean typography and an unobtrusive reading layout designed to disappear around the text.
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A real page from this editionChapter One
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.
A note on the text. Robinson Crusoeis in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition — the typesetting, design, and formatting work that makes it a pleasure to read on a modern device. The source text is also available free from Project Gutenberg.
Robinson Crusoe
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