Oorspr. uitg.: 1719.

Het verhaal van een schipbreukeling die zich achtentwintig jaar lang in leven hield op een onbewoond eiland voor de Zuidamerikaanse kust.

The full title of this book is "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures 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. Written by Himself." The book is a unique fictional blending of the traditions of Puritan spiritual autobiography with an insistent scrutiny of the nature of men and women as social creatures. The title character leaves his comfortable middle-class home in England to go to sea. Surviving shipwreck, he lives on an island for 28 years, alone for most of the time, until he saves the life of a savage, who he names Friday. The two men eventually leave the island for England.