-Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe was the subject of a 2019 Special Collections exhibit commemorating the 300th anniversary of its publication. The story of Robinson Crusoe revolves around the imaginary Island of Despair or Crusoe’s Island, where the sailor became shipwrecked and lived as a castaway for 28 years. While Crusoe’s island located at the mouth of the Orinoco River does not exist, Defoe based his story on Más a Tierra, an island off the coast of Chile. It was here that Alexander Selkirk was stranded for four years, which inspired Defoe’s novel. The impact of Crusoe was so great that it gave rise to the Robinsonade genre, which involved people surviving on deserted islands.
Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731).
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner: who lived eight and twenty years all alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque… London: W. Taylor, 1719.
Lehigh University Catalog Record: https://asa.lib.lehigh.edu/Record/10985950
A version of this text has been digitized and is available through the Internet Archive.
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