Books

London: John Stockdale, 1790. FIRST EDITION thus. Two volumes. Original diced calf boards with modern rebacked calf leather spine with raised bands and gilt tooled design of a flower. Two red morocco labled with gilt lettering. Frontispieces, illustrated. This has the lengthy life of Defoe plus an elaborate list of Defoe's writings, followed by the 8 pages of publisher's catalog in Vol 2. Thomas Stothard (August 17, 1755 - April 27, 1834) was an English painter and engraver. He designed plates for pocket-books, tickets for concerts, illustrations to almanacs, portraits of popular actors--into all these he infused a grace and distinction which make them sought after by collectors. Among his more important series are the two sets of illustrations to Robinson Crusoe, one for the New Magazine and one for Stockdale's edition, and the plates to The Pilgrim's Progress (1788), to Harding's edition of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1792), to The Rape of the…

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.

The first edition of Robinson Crusoe was published without Defoe's name on it, and is titled 'The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventure 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 Pyrates.' Identification is typically through comparison with known first edition features (typeset, errors, page count, publisher details, etc).