E-text prepared by Internet Archive; University of Florida; and Charlie Kirschner and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

Editorial note:  Daniel Defoe’s tale of Robinson Crusoe was first
                    published in 1719.  Numerous—­almost countless—­
                    versions were published subsequently.  Several are
                    available in Project Gutenberg’s library, including
                    our e-books #521, 561, 5902, 6328, 6936, 11239, and
                    11866 (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/521 etc.). 
                    Various tales have been included in the different
                    versions, usually under the names of “The Adventures
                    of Robinson Crusoe,” “The Further Adventures of
                    Robinson Crusoe,” and “Robinson Crusoe’s Vision of
                    the Angelic World.”  Even an account of the
                    adventures of Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned
                    for four years on an island in the Pacific Ocean,
                    has been incorporated into some versions of the
                    Robinson Crusoe stories.  This e-book, taken from an
                    1808 edition, includes “The Adventures of Robinson
                    Crusoe” and “The Further Adventures of Robinson
                    Crusoe.”

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE

by Daniel de foe

London.

18O8

[Illustration:  I had one labour to make me a Canoe, which at last I finished.]

THE LIFE OF DE FOE

Daniel De Foe was descended from a respectable family in the county of Northampton, and born in London, about the year 1663.  His father, James Foe, was a butcher, in the parish of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, and a protestant dissenter.  Why the subject of this memoir prefixed the De to his family name cannot now be ascertained, nor did he at any period of his life think it necessary to give his reasons to the public.  The political scribblers of the day, however, thought proper to remedy this lack of information, and accused him of possessing so little of the amor patriae, as to make the addition in order that he might not be taken for an Englishman; though this idea could have had no other foundation than the circumstance of his having, in consequence of his zeal for King William, attacked the prejudices of his countrymen in his “True-born Englishman.”