Robinson Crusoe

                          Robinson Crusoe 

                              Daniel Defoe

About Author:

Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain with others such as Samuel Richardson, and is among the founders of the English novel. He was a prolific and versatile writer, producing more than five hundred books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics, including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology, and the supernatural. He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.

Robinson Crusoe as post-colonial Text

Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe at the age of fifty-nine and it was an immediate success. The story of Robinson Crusoe that has delighted the young, and the old for that matter, for over two-hundred years was actually based on an experience in the life of a seaman, Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years on the deserted island of Juan Fernandez.

The book is a kind of epic of human endeavour ceaselessly striving after some fresh comfort or betterment. Opinions differ as to the sincerity of the religious psychology; there can be no doubt as to the truth of the touches which indicate the desire for companionship. In the hierarchy of Crusoe's retainers, the parrot ranks first, because it can speak words. For sheer power of conveying a set of sensations, all writers agree that nothing can exceed the lonely man's sudden discovery of a footprint on the sand: yet the description of his landing through the surf, his flight before wave after wave, is hardly inferior. And for perfection and beauty of invention, one may cite the incident of corn blades springing up, as it first seemed, by unaccountable providence beside his cave. But like everything else that is recorded as happening to him, this seems so picturesque and yet so credible that we hardly consider the art of the narrator. If verisimilitude in fiction were the highest achievement of an artist, few could rank beside Defoe.