More years pass and Crusoe discovers cannibals, who occasionally visit the island to kill and eat prisoners. He reads the Bible and becomes religious, thanking God for his fate in which nothing is missing but human society. By using tools salvaged from the ship, and some which he makes himself, he hunts, grows barley and rice, dries grapes to make raisins, learns to make pottery and raises goats. By making marks in a wooden cross, he creates a calendar. He builds a fenced-in habitat near a cave which he excavates. Overcoming his despair, he fetches arms, tools and other supplies from the ship before it breaks apart and sinks. Only he, the captain's dog, and two cats survive the shipwreck. He sees penguins and seals on this island. : Chapter 23 He observes the latitude as 9 degrees and 22 minutes north. Years later, Crusoe joins an expedition to purchase slaves from Africa but is shipwrecked in a storm about forty miles out to sea on an island off the Venezuelan coast (which he calls the Island of Despair) near the mouth of the Orinoco River on 30 September 1659. With the captain's help, Crusoe procures a plantation in Brazil.

Two years later, he escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury a captain of a Portuguese ship off the west coast of Africa rescues him. This journey, too, ends in disaster, as the ship is taken over by Salé pirates (the Salé Rovers) and Crusoe is enslaved by a Moor. After a tumultuous journey where his ship is wrecked in a storm, his desire for the sea remains so strong that he sets out to sea again. Robinson Crusoe (the family name corrupted from the German name 'Kreutznaer') sets sail from Kingston upon Hull on a sea voyage in August 1651, against the wishes of his parents, who wanted him to pursue a career in law. Pictorial map of Crusoe's island, the 'Island of Despair', showing incidents from the book Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television, and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. : 23–24ĭespite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called 'Más a Tierra' (now part of Chile) which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Įpistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer) – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, roughly resembling Tobago, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. Robinson Crusoe ( / ˈ k r uː s oʊ/) is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719.

The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Black desert adventure begins