“I, poor miserable Robinson Crusoe, being shipwrecked, came on shore on this dismal unfortunate island, all the rest of the ship’s company being drowned. In despair of any relief, I saw nothing but death before me…” Thus Crusoe begins his journal inDaniel Defoe’s classic novel: the vividly realistic account of a solitary castaway’s triumph over nature—and over the fears, self-doubt and loneliness that are parts of human nature. For almost three centuries, Robinson Crusoe has remained one of thebest known and most read tales in modern literature, a popularity owing as much to the enduring freshness and immediacy of its style as to its widely acknowledged status as the very first English novel.