Many literary scholars consider Robinson Crusoe as the first novel in English literary creation. It has been translated into many languages of the world, even considered one of the most translated works worldwide after the Bible.
Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. He was the son of a butcher named James Foe (Daniel later changed his surname to Defoe because it sounded better). Young Daniel studied at a religious school and then started trading by buying and selling different goods. Thus, he traveled all over Europe. Daniel Defoe fought against King James II and later joined the army of King William III. He was imprisoned twice because he wrote some texts against the church and government. Daniel Defoe also worked a lot with his newspaper, in which he wrote more than 500 articles under his own name, more than any other writer in the English language. He had a very active life. He died in 1731 in London. When he was almost 16 years old, Daniel Defoe began writing novels.
From this period are the works: “Captain Singleton,” “Moll Flanders,” and “Roxana,” but the book that made him famous worldwide is “Robinson Crusoe.” This was his first novel, written in 1719 and had immediate success. This novel tells a very interesting event. It describes the life of its hero, Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe was born in 1632 in York from a good family, but he was not a native; his father was from Bremen who settled in Hull and made a great fortune. Defoe relied on the true story of a sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was abandoned by pirates on the island Juan Fernandes, a small island in the Pacific Ocean. He lived there alone for four years and managed to leave with the help of a ship in 1709.
Many literary scholars consider Robinson Crusoe as the first novel in English literary creation. It has been translated into many languages of the world, even considered one of the most translated works worldwide after the Bible. He is one of the four most popular writers and founder of the English novel. Defoe also wrote many political tracts which caused problems with English authorities, who punished him by imprisoning him for a short time. At the same time, he was a pioneer of economic and business journalism.
Daniel Defoe is the creator of the masterpiece “Robinson Crusoe.” This novel tells a very interesting event. It describes the life of its hero, Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe was passionate about sea travels, but not even his mother accepted that he should go since Robinson had a calm and secured life. He did not obey his father’s orders and sailed with a friend. In 1691 he left Hull to go to London. He never thought his adventures would start so early and last so long. He and his friend on the ship were sailing towards London. The winds blew, the sky was entirely covered by clouds, covered with storms.
They were forced to stop in Larmuth, until the storms coming from all sides calmed down. Many thoughts passed through his head, many days passed like this until they arrived in London and he ended up in a better society. He had thought about the fact that he had not stayed at home, but he aimed to make a fortune by wandering the world. After a few days of staying in London, he boarded a ship going to the coasts of Africa. This journey was so bad that he ended up as a poor slave where he met a man named Xuri. They had such friendship that one day they escaped with a small boat. Both were sailing from the settlement of the wild and were very scared, and suddenly a ship approached them. The foreign ship came to their aid; it was Brazilian. They went to Brazil. There Robinson left Xuri and wanted to continue sailing by ship, but first, the captain of the ship that saved him introduced him to a manufacturer who produced sugar, and he decided to work there and bought land.
In the will, he wrote that if he died during this journey, half of the fortune would be given to the captain and the other half to his family. Truly, this journey was very bitter. Sailing, the days passed until they could land on some piece of land. Suddenly one of the companions saw land and started shouting. “Land,” “Land,” everyone was happy, but this happiness did not last long because the ship’s edge hit one of the hard rocks around the coast. The ship was destroyed; everyone was dead, but only Robinson had survived and by swimming reached the shore. From there started the story of the uninhabited island where we follow all the adventures of “Robinson Crusoe.”
This interesting story of Robinson’s life on the uninhabited island by the writer “is written with a truly poetic inspiration and this part of this novel is the most valuable at the same time also the most for the reader. The main content of the novel is his life on that island; the theme is miserable life on the island, it is a fight between man and nature itself, but this fight between man and nature itself develops under such extraordinary conditions that even the simplest fact such as the creation of an ordinary life for a man, understood by the reader as a new heroic step of “Robinson” in the fight to create the best possible human living conditions.
