Defoe Daniel - Robinson Crusoe

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Introduction Thomas Keymer 2007
Editorial material Thomas Keymer and James Kelly 2007

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First published as Worlds Classics paperback 1983
Reissued as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 1998
New edition published 2007

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?1731.

Robinson Crusoe / Daniel Defoe; edited with an introduction by Thomas Keymer
and notes by Thomas Keymer and James Kelly.New ed.
p. cm(Oxford worlds classics)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN13: 9780192833426 (alk. paper)
ISBN10: 0192833421 (alk. paper)
1. Crusoe, Robinson (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Survival after airplane accidents,
shipwrecks, etcFiction. 3. CastawaysFiction. 4. IslandsFiction. I. Keymer, Tom.
II. Kelly, James William. III. Title.
PR3403.A2K49 2007
823.5dc22

2006026022

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ISBN 0192833421 9780192833426

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

DANIEL DEFOE

Edited with an Introduction by
THOMAS KEYMER

and Notes by
THOMAS KEYMER and JAMES KELLY

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

ROBINSON CRUSOE

DANIEL DEFOE (16601731) was born in London, the third child of James Foe, a tallow chandler, and his wife Alice. He attended Charles Mortons dissenting academy in Newington Green before establishing himself as a hosier and general merchant in Cornhill, and married Mary Tuffley in 1684. A year later he joined the Duke of Monmouths disastrous rebellion against James II, and was lucky to escape the Bloody Assizes following Monmouths defeat at Sedgemoor. Persistent overinvestment precipitated his bankruptcy in 1692, after which he turned to writing.

Defoes first great success came with his satirical poem The True-Born Englishman (1701). The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), an audacious parody of High Anglican extremism, brought him a charge of seditious libel and he was briefly imprisoned. Defoe was employed by successive ministries as a polemicist until about 1717, and continued to write prolifically thereafter in a range of fields including politics, economics, and religion.

Between 1719 and 1724, Defoe produced the pioneering fictional narratives on which his reputation has come to rest. The first part of Robinson Crusoe was published on 25 April 1719, with a sequel in August. A third part, Serious Reflections, followed in 1720, in which year Memoirs of a Cavalier and Captain Singleton were also published. Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and A Journal of the Plague Year appeared in 1722 and Roxana in 1724, to be followed by further major works of non-fiction, including A Tour thro the Whole Island of Great Britain (17246) and The Complete English Tradesman (17257). Defoe died following a stroke on 24 April 1731 while in hiding from a persistent creditor. He is buried in Bunhill Fields.

THOMAS KEYMER is Chancellor Jackman Professor of English at the University of Toronto and a Supernumerary Fellow of St Annes College, Oxford. His books include Richardsons Clarissa and the Eighteenth-Century Reader (Cambridge, 1992), Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel (Oxford, 2002), and The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to 1830, co-edited with Jon Mee (Cambridge, 2004).

JAMES KELLY has published widely on Defoe, voyage narrative, and related topics, and serves as a council member of the Hakluyt Society. He is Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in English at Worcester College, Oxford.

The present edition of Robinson Crusoe is based on the text established by J. Donald Crowley and his research assistant Nancy Splinter Zguta for the Oxford English Novels edition of 1972, and we gratefully acknowledge their textual work. Our debts to some of the leading scholars of Defoe and his age, especially Max Novak, Claude Rawson, and John Richetti, are personal as well as intellectual. Financial support was generously provided during preparation of this edition by the Leverhulme Trust, Major Research Fellowship Programme (Thomas Keymer), and the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford (James Kelly). We are grateful to Nuala Koetter for providing images of the title page and frontispiece to Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which are reproduced by permission of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.