Books

DEFOE, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner. Who lived eight and twenty Years all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates. Written by Himself. The Fourth Edition. London: Printed for W. Taylor, 1719. The rare fourth edition, first issue (Hutchins 4A). With no comma after Life; The tail-pieces at the bottom of page 364 with two birds flanking a flaming bowl, above a cupid's head and bow and arrows, and page "317" correctly numbered. The fourth edition was published the same year as the first edition. Octavo (7 1/4 x 4 5/8 inches; 185 x 118 mm). [4], 364, [4, ads] pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait of Robinson Crusoe by Clark & Pine. Folding map is present in the accompanying first edition of volume 2. Decorative woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Volume I of this work was so popular that it went through four editions within the first four months of it being printed. [Together with:] [DEFOE, Daniel]. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of his Life, and of the Strange Surprising Accounts of his Travels Round three Parts of the Globe. Written by Himself. To which is added a Map of the World, in which is Delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe. London: Printed by W. Taylor, 1719. First edition, first issue, second variant (Hutchins "B2"), with the verso of leaf A4 blank and with "Breaking," "Difference," "Punishment," and "wanting" on the recto; with "Farther" on the recto of leaf B1; with p. 295 numbered 215; and the text showing uniform printing. The typesetting is not corrected on pp. 2, 103, 139, or 231. Octavo. [8], 373, [11, ads] pp. Folding engraved map of the world facing title-page. Decorative woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. Two volumes uniformly bound in full contemporary speckled calf. Spines ruled in gilt. Both volumes with red morocco spine labels, lettered in gilt. Spines repaired at hinges. Both volumes with previous owner's bookplate on front pastedown. Volume I with previous owner's old ink notes on front and back endpapers and on blank recto of the frontispiece. Old ink signature to top margin of title-page, Volume II with some minor repairs to top edge of folding map, supplying a few letters in facsimile. Title-page is a bit frayed along fore-edge. Previous owner's old ink signature dated 1776 to top of title-page and first page of preface. A tiny hole to blank margin of leaf Z4. Free endpapers renewed. Overall an excellent copy of this set. Beginning with Captain William Dampier's enormously popular A New Voyage Round the World (1697; seventh edition 1729), English travel literature enjoyed a second Renaissance. Circumnavigators and privateers Dampier and Woodes Rogers being preeminent published accounts of their adventures. In at least three of the most popular instances Dampier (1697), Rogers (1712), and Edward Cooke, one of Rogers's mates (1712) the frontispiece to their volume of voyages was a folding map, a planisphere by Herman Moll upon which a dotted line traced the route of the voyager. This then was the convention which lies immediately behind "A Map of the World on which is Delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe." Crusoe's folding planisphere has been attributed to Moll, but though it is similar to the map employed by Dampier and Cooke and is even closer to that employed by Rogers, it is not identical to either, and lacking an "H. Moll fecit," its origin remains indefinite. It first appeared in the first edition of The Farther Adventures; it was added to the fourth and later editions of The Strange Surprising Adventures": (Newberry Library) "After twenty years of enormously prolific pamphleteering, political and sectarian, sometimes in verse, Defoe suddenl.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, is one of the earliest and most influential novels in the history of English literature. It is a fictional autobiography of the title character, a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived as a comment on the British Imperialism of the age and the emerging ideology of the 'self-made man', and it reflects on the author's vast array of experiences.