Robinson Crusoe

368 pp. Color plates, endpapers, and jacket art by N.C. Wyeth. First published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is commonly considered as the first novel in English. Based on the real-life experience of Alexander Selkirk, who spent four years on a Pacific island, it is the account of the 28-year stay of an English sailor on a nearly uninhabited island near America. Actually, Robinson Crusoe has to share the island with cannibals. He eventually manages to save some of their victims, one of them becoming his servant under the name Man Friday.