Robinson Crusoe

Against his father's wishes, young Robinson Crusoe runs away to sea in pursuit of adventure — and pays for it dearly. After storms, enslavement, and escape, he settles as a planter in Brazil, only to be shipwrecked on a deserted island off the coast of South America, the sole survivor of his crew. There he will remain for twenty-eight years.

Daniel Defoe's foundational 1719 novel follows Crusoe's painstaking labor to survive and civilize his solitude: salvaging tools from the wreck, building shelter, raising crops and goats, keeping a journal, and wrestling with faith and despair. Years into his isolation he discovers he is not as alone as he believed, and after rescuing a captive from cannibals — a man he names Friday — his island becomes a small, uneasy society of two.

Often called the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe is a landmark tale of survival, self-reliance, and endurance, and a much-debated record of the colonial attitudes of its age.