Robinson Crusoe

A 1719 novel by Daniel Defoe follows an English castaway who survives for years on a remote island and later rescues other castaways.

Daniel Defoe: An English writer and pamphleteer whose fiction includes Robinson Crusoe. Defoe published the novel anonymously in 1719.
Survival skills: Practical abilities used to meet basic needs and stay alive in difficult conditions. Crusoe secures food, shelter, clothing, and safety through learned and improvised skills.
Alexander Selkirk: A Scottish sailor who lived alone on an island in the Juan Fernández archipelago from 1704 to 1709. Selkirk’s reported isolation helped shape the public image of the castaway story.
Robinsonade: A story about isolation and survival on an uninhabited or remote setting, modeled on Robinson Crusoe. The novel became the defining source for later island-survival narratives.
First-person narrative: A narrative form in which a character tells events using the first person. Crusoe presents his adventures as a personal account.
Subsistence agriculture: Farming that primarily produces food for the farmer and household rather than for sale. Growing grain and raising animals help Crusoe establish a dependable food supply.
William Dampier: An English explorer and writer whose voyages produced influential travel accounts. Dampier’s published travel writing formed part of the maritime literature Defoe knew.
Swiss Family Robinson: Johann David Wyss’s novel about a family shipwrecked on an island and building a new life there. It recasts the solitary castaway pattern as a family adventure.
Castaway: A person stranded in an isolated place, often after a shipwreck. The castaway predicament organizes the novel’s central plot.
Shipwreck: The destruction or disabling of a ship, often leaving survivors stranded. A wreck leaves Crusoe isolated but supplies tools and materials salvaged from the vessel.

Linked from 11 pages