Crusoe
Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox And The Creation Of A Myth
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
It is January 1719 and Daniel Defoe, almost sixty, sits at a table, writing. He is troubled with gout and debt, but for now is preoccupied with a younger man on a barren shore – Robinson Crusoe, for which he will principally be remembered.
Several miles south, an old man, Robert Knox, is bent over a heavy volume. It is Historical Relation, his account of being held captive on Ceylon, published forty years ago after he escaped and returned to England. It has long been out of print, but a copy perhaps sits on the desk of Daniel Defoe as he writes.
Where did Crusoe come from? And what is the secret of his endurance? Crusoe explores the intertwined lives of two real men – Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox – and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book and its hero, the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While authors such as Tim Severin have made the case for various models for Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Frank's well-researched if overly detailed account makes the case that his primary model was real-life voyager Robert Knox, who was detained in Ceylon beginning in 1659, the year that saw Crusoe cast away. This is no coincidence. Although Robinson Crusoe was billed as "Written by Himself," Frank says this ruse represents one more effort by the prolific inventor of the English novel to distance himself from the source of his invention of this most enduring myth of English fortitude and adaptability. Indeed, it is virtually certain that by the time the crafty Defoe published his lesser-known Captain Singleton, writes Frank, he was quite familiar with all the events of Knox's unpublished autobiography, not to mention the sailor's (later sea captain's) 1681 bestselling An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon. Once it was generally ascertained that Defoe was the author of Crusoe, there was no rush to enlighten the public that, unlike Knox, Defoe may not have journeyed at all. Despite its intrinsic interest, however, Frank's account is tedious and scattershot in drawing connections between her two protagonists. 12 pages of illus. and maps.