Robinson Crusoe Reading Order

Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe is the first English novel — or at least, it has a strong claim to being the founding text of the English novel tradition, the first time the form's key conventions (first-person narration, realistic detail, the illusion of autobiography, secular concerns rather than religious allegory) were assembled into a full-length work. The story is simple: a Yorkshire merchant's son ignores his father's advice, goes to sea, is shipwrecked, and spends twenty-eight years alone on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco River, building a life from the wreckage. The novel's power comes from its extraordinary concreteness — Defoe's accumulation of practical detail (how Crusoe builds a shelter, makes pottery, processes grain, deals with wild goats) is both a formal achievement and a philosophical argument about the relationship between labor and identity. Friday, the island man whom Crusoe rescues and enslaves, is the novel's most problematic element — the founding text of the English novel is also the founding text of the English colonial novel.