Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is often cited as the first true English novel. The story of the resourceful Crusoe, shipwrecked on a remote tropical island for nearly three decades and forced to build a civilization from scratch, is an endlessly compelling narrative of survival, ingenuity, and solitude — and the ancestor of every desert island story that followed.
The novel also raises complex questions about colonialism, faith, and civilization that have kept it the subject of critical discussion for three centuries. Download this free EPUB from Better Gutenberg and read the book that may have started the novel form itself.