Crusoe

Starred review from February 1, 2012

Daniel Defoe was a pioneer of the novel, writing his first one, Robinson Crusoe (1719), when he was about 60. What inspired that story, which, like Defoe's other major fiction, has remained in print for almost 300 years? Frank (A Voyager Out: A Life of Mary Kingsley) alternately explores Defoe's creation of Robinson Crusoe and the life of East India Company sea captain Robert Knox, who, decades before Defoe's novel, was taken prisoner on the island of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) and remained captive for 20 years. The story of Knox's imprisonment, based on his own chronicle printed in 1681, is enthralling, while that of the enterprising and prolific Defoe is equally moving. Robinson Crusoe is the minor player here; what Frank is after is not simply to claim Knox's experiences as Defoe's inspiration (many see Alexander Selkirk as the source) but to bring back to us the long lives of these two compelling figures, who probably never met, demonstrating the far remove of the era and the astonishing modernity of Defoe's mind. VERDICT Defoe aficionados will enjoy the chance to argue about Crusoe's sources; serious general readers and those who love breathing the air of earlier times will be stirred by this double study.--Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2012
Alexander Selkirk's ordeal as a castaway may have seeded the plot for Robinson Crusoe, but Daniel Defoe's tale is a clear reflection of his own life's struggles. At the end of his life, Defoe labeled Crusoe more of an allegory than a novel, implying a good degree of autobiography at the same time. Biographer Frank (Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, 2002) introduces Robert Knox, once a true captive, who survived on his wits and the English practice of making your environment adapt to your needs rather than adjusting to it. Defoe mined information from a vast library, including The Odyssey, The Tempest, Pilgrim's Progress and an extensive number of published accounts of castaways. As Defoe cherry-picked incidents from different lives, he adapted them to reflect disasters he had suffered. He also had no compunction about fitting other stories neatly into his own. His Captain Singleton contained blatantly lifted passages from Knox's published story of his 19-year captivity in Ceylon. Frank parallels the lives and adventures of Defoe, Knox and Crusoe, illustrating a deep relationship between author and models. This side-by-side biography of the two men shows similarities between their lives and their attitudes toward disaster, although their personalities and moralities were markedly different. Many have said that Crusoe is much more a self-help book than a novel, while Knox's story is a treatise rather than a travel book. They both exhibit a similarly distinct philosophy of life. Defoe proselytizes on morals, lessons and their meanings while encouraging his readers to turn the challenges of adversity into advantage. Knox teaches by example. Frank wisely leaves the minutia of spotting duplication in their works to Defoe scholars while she focuses on the values and beliefs of the two men. Knox came out to be the better of the two, and his little-known story deserves reading.

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March 15, 2012
This is a fresh look at a familiar classic, one that provides deep background into the origins of the great shipwreck story and its author, the father of the English novel. It may be familiar territory for Defoe scholars, but Frank offers a terrifically entertaining and detailed comparison of Defoe's life with that of Robert Knox, a sometime author and shipwreck survivor and the probable model for Robinson Crusoe. Knox was 19 years old in 1660 when he was shipwrecked in Ceylon. Along with his father and crew, he was taken captive by the King of Kandy. He was held there for 20 years and, in 1681, published An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, which details his day-to-day captivity and his escape. The author of Robinson Crusoe was almost certainly aware of Knox's book, as Frank demonstrates. Defoe began writing in earnest after he got out of debtor's prison in 1693, and by the time he published Crusoe in 1719, he had penned scores of books and pamphlets, offering advice on everything from politics to business, road construction, and religion. With light, dead-on humor, Frank shows that Defoe's great survivor story is really about the power of positive thinking and tags it the ultimate how-to book. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

January 9, 2012
While authors such as Tim Severin have made the case for various models for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Frank’s well-researched if overly detailed account makes the case that his primary model was real-life voyager Robert Knox, who was detained in Ceylon beginning in 1659, the year that saw Crusoe cast away. This is no coincidence. Although Robinson Crusoe was billed as “Written by Himself,” Frank says this ruse represents one more effort by the prolific inventor of the English novel to distance himself from the source of his invention of this most enduring myth of English fortitude and adaptability. Indeed, it is virtually certain that by the time the crafty Defoe published his lesser-known Captain Singleton, writes Frank, he was quite familiar with all the events of Knox’s unpublished autobiography, not to mention the sailor’s (later sea captain’s) 1681 bestselling An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon. Once it was generally ascertained that Defoe was the author of Crusoe, there was no rush to enlighten the public that, unlike Knox, Defoe may not have journeyed at all. Despite its intrinsic interest, however, Frank’s account is tedious and scattershot in drawing connections between her two protagonists. 12 pages of illus. and maps. Agent: David Godwin (U.K.)