Books

London, John Stockdale, 1790. Large 8vo. (6) + (8) + (8) + 1-389pp.; V + 1-456pp. + 14 pp. advertisments. 2 engraved title-vignettes, frontispiece in both volumes and 14 engraved plates after Stothard by Medland. Most tissue guards present. 14 pp. publisher?s catalogue. Finely bound in brown morocco (Bayntun, Bath). Spine gilt in compartments. A few spots to margins, one minor hole, affecting one letter. First Stothard edition with the first appearance of George Chalmer?s biography of The Life of daniel De Foe (1790). .

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.