 |
|
 |
-
-
1700Congreve, The Way of the World
-
1700John Dryden, Fables
-
1702Queen's Royal Cookery
-
1704East India Company sales catalogue
-
1711The Spectator
-
1712Jonathan Swift, A Proposal...
-
1715Sugar in Britain
-
1719Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
-
1721Bartholomew Fair
-
1724Trade and the English language
-
1729Swift, A Modest Proposal
-
1730East India Company: Bengal textiles
-
1731English arrives in the West Indies
-
1733Hogarth, Harlot's Progress
-
1738Cities in chaos
-
1738Polite conversation
-
1738James Miller, Of Politeness
-
1740Samuel Richardson, Pamela
-
1742Advert for a giant
-
1743Muffin seller
-
1747The Art of Cookery
-
1749Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
-
1755Johnson's Dictionary
-
1759Sterne, Tristram Shandy
-
1762Lowth’s grammar
-
1762Rousseau, The Social Contract
-
1764Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
-
1773Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
-
1775Captain Cook's journal
-
1775Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
-
1780Burns, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
-
1780Anglo-Indian newspaper
-
1781Notices about runaway slaves
-
1782First British advert for curry powder
-
1789Storming of the Bastille
-
1789Olaudah Equiano
-
1790William Blake's Notebook
-
1791Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
-
1791Walker’s correct pronunciation
-
1792Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman
-
1794Songs of Innocence and Experience
-
-
Intro
Often hailed as the first English novel, Robinson Crusoe has a story that will be familiar to many: that of the sailor Crusoe, who finds himself shipwrecked on a remote island and must carve an existence for himself out of the few resources that are available to him. Its author, Daniel Defoe, based his tale on the experiences of the traveller Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years marooned on the Pacific island of Juan Fernandez in the early eighteenth century. The adventures of Crusoe – his struggle to cultivate the land, his encounters with cannibals and mutineers, and his friendship with Man Friday – were hugely popular when the novel was first published, and sparked a vast number of spinoffs and translations.
While it can be read as a simple adventure story, Robinson Crusoe also has a wider resonance: its themes of self-reliance and hard work have been seen as an embodiment of the Protestant work ethic, and Crusoe can be viewed as the archetypal colonist.
Prev
