Robinson Crusoe and the Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Running away to sea to escape a legal career, Robinson Crusoe ends up having rather more excitement than he bargained for in this infamous adventure yarn by Daniel Defoe. After working as a successful merchant and then a plantation owner, Crusoe is lured to sea again as part of a slave-gathering expedition only to find himself shipwrecked off the coast of Trinidad in his third and most famous role--the original castaway.

Salvaging what he can from his wreck, Crusoe establishes an existence on the island, adopting a pet parrot and goat and saving a man named Friday from cannibals. When he eventually seizes a ship from mutineers and sails back to England, he find that things have changed in the three decades that he's been away . . .

Published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is the first English example of realistic fiction. It was a popular innovation, being reprinted four times in its first year and going on to have a huge influence on writers as diverse as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Beatrix Potter.

Unusually, this edition also includes The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, where the action returns to the island and other exotic locations including Madagascar, Cambodia, and Siberia. There is also a map showing the location of Robinson Crusoe Island and Crusoe's onward journey.

Born c. 1660, Daniel Defoe is acknowledged as being one of the founders of the English novel. Growing up in London and surviving the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666, he went on to become a trader, journalist and spy. He also wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on topics as varied as politics, crime, religion, marriage, and the supernatural.