"I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country...".
So starts one of the most famous ever novels, Robinson Crusoe, first published in London in 1719 by Daniel Defoe, ca. 1659–1661 - 1731.
Today we simply refer to the book mentioning its eponymous hero, but on the title page of the first edition you read 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; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates.
In that time, book titles used to be a kind of summary, a form of advertising: the title had to attract the readers and introduce them into the core of the story.
Robinson's Crusoe's voyage, from
Robinson's
journey started from Bristol, England, when he was nineteen. He was a
merchant’s son, who did not want to prosecute his father’s job. He was captured by pirates, but succeeded in escaping from them. He reached Brazil and started to work in plantations. He
left a second time for a slave trade, but the ship was caught in a storm:
And now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not live, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor if we had could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land. (Chapter 3, http://www.online-literature.com/defoe/crusoe/3/).
Crusoe was shipwrecked off a desert island and the only survivor. There he lived for the following twenty-eight years.
Actually, the island was used as a ritual place by a tribe of native cannibals. One day Robinson surprised them while they were going to kill three prisoners and succeeded in rescuing one of them: he is Friday, who owes his name to the day of the week when he appeared on the island. Crusoe was happy: he had found a servant and companion, whom he taught English and the principles of the Christian religion.
And now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not live, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor if we had could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land. (Chapter 3, http://www.online-literature.com/defoe/crusoe/3/).
Crusoe was shipwrecked off a desert island and the only survivor. There he lived for the following twenty-eight years.
Actually, the island was used as a ritual place by a tribe of native cannibals. One day Robinson surprised them while they were going to kill three prisoners and succeeded in rescuing one of them: he is Friday, who owes his name to the day of the week when he appeared on the island. Crusoe was happy: he had found a servant and companion, whom he taught English and the principles of the Christian religion.
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