Robinson Crusoe
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Publisher Description
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. 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.
Epistolary, 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 Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued. 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.
Despite 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. It is generally seen as a contender for the first English novel. 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Newly abridged by Timothy Meis, James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans comes to life under the paintbrush of N.C. Wyeth, with illustrations originally published in 1919. The artist offers readers a close-up view of the French and Indian War, in paintings such as British colonel Duncan's struggle against a Huron warrior or the Mohican Chingachgook similarly fighting off another Huron warrior in the clearing of a wood. Wyeth's paintings also accompany Meis's adaptation of Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe, due out in February.