First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is widely regarded as the first English novel and the founding text of the castaway narrative that has influenced literature ever since. When the Yorkshire sailor Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on a tropical island off the coast of South America, he must draw on every resource of ingenuity, industry, and faith to survive. Over twenty-eight years of solitude, Crusoe builds shelters, cultivates crops, domesticates animals, and constructs a kind of civilization from the raw materials of his environment. His eventual encounter with the man he names Friday introduces themes of companionship, colonial authority, and cultural difference that have occupied readers and scholars for three centuries. Defoe writes with a plain, exact, deeply observant prose that makes the improbable story utterly convincing, and Crusoe's faith and perseverance give the narrative a moral weight that transcends the adventure plot. This Crownwell Classics edition presents the complete and unabridged text.