Robinson Crusoe
Dr. Edward Everett Hale has observed a curious feature in “Robinson Crusoe.” He says: “Readers who are curious in English history must not fail to observe that Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked on his island on September 30, 1659. It was in that month that the English Commonwealth ended and Richard Cromwell left the palace at Whitehall. Robinson lived in this island home for twenty-eight years. These twenty-eight years covered the exact period of the second Stuart reign in England. Robinson Crusoe returned to England in June, 1687; the Convention Parliament which established William III. met in London at the same time. All this could not be an accidental coincidence. Defoe must have meant that the ’true-born Englishman’ could not live in England during the years while the Stuarts reigned. Robinson Crusoe was a ruler himself on his own island, and was never the subject of Charles II. or James II.”