The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
The Robinson Crusoe Series, Book 1
by Daniel Defoe 1660–1731
The book, and the century it came out of.
A young man goes to sea against his father’s advice, survives storms, slavery and a shipwreck, and finds himself alone on an island where the only proof another human exists is a single footprint. Defoe was fifty-nine when he published it, had been pilloried and imprisoned for his pamphlets, and wrote it as a true account by the man himself — most of his first readers believed it. Illustrated with 56 full-page plates — paintings by Bakhuizen, van de Velde the Younger and van Anthonissen among them.
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen[1], who settled first at Hull.
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Adventure & the Sea
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 344 pages
- Reading time
- about 7 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501644489
56 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
1719, and the novel had not been invented yet
Defoe was nearly sixty, had been a merchant, a bankrupt, a government agent and a prisoner in the pillory. He published this as a true account by a real man, with no author’s name on it, and a great many readers believed him.
There was a real castaway to point at: Alexander Selkirk had been taken off an uninhabited Pacific island in 1709 after four years alone, and his story had been in print. What Defoe added was the ledger — the counting of goods, the tallying of days, the accounts of profit and loss — because his readers were the first generation of English people to think in those terms about everything, including their own souls.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Adventure & the Sea shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501644489, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Daniel Defoe's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 344 pages, which is roughly about 7 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
