Book Review Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe And Its Forgotten Sequel

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1719 saw the publication of one of the greatest novels in all English literature, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, setting the bar for all other desert island and marooned travelers stories to follow. It was inspired by a real shipwreck survivor, Alexander Selkirk. I knew the story of the solitary islander from various film and TV versions, and I knew he eventually hooked up with another man, Friday. Reading the book I was amazed by its rapid pace and how much more goes on. Crusoe is trying to get to his plantation in America, and he is a slave owner, but he is shipwrecked on his first voyage, and captured by pirates on his second. He is shipwrecked escaping from the men who enslave him as the ship sinks. He ends up on a tropical island for 28 years, before finding it is also occupied by a tribe of cannibals. He rescues Friday from them and converts him to Christianity. A ship arrives, but only to dump the captain on the island, after the mutinous crew have taken it over. Crusoe and Friday help recapture the ship abandoning the mutineers on the island and Crusoe goes home. Taken for dead he finds his family has left him no inheritance but his plantation is doing OK and Crusoe leads Friday to see his various European estates (avoiding the sea as much as possible). In Europe they fight off wolves and Friday kills a bear. Amazed himself by the book's success, Defoe fired off a sequel, The Further Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe in a few months, publishing it the same year the first book came out. Rushed and sloppy, a shameless cash in exercise, it is very poor beside the original. The plot of the sequel - In a mid-life crisis, Crusoe decides to revisit his old island, dragging Friday and the Captain who rescued him along. The abandoned colonists have done well, but the cannibals attack, killing Friday (which hardly affects Crusoe emotionally). Crusoe goes round the World, trying to convert native populations to Christianity, often shooting those reluctant to do so. Foreigners are seen as uncivilized savages and it is very episodic, with Crusoe returning home aged seventy-two. Not surprisingly, the second book did not do as well as the first. Arthur Chappell