Written with a combination of epistolary, confessional, and didactic forms, the book follows the title character (born Robinson Kreutznaer) after he is cast away and spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

[5][6] The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and that the book was a non-fiction travelogue.

Alarmed at this, he conserves the ammunition he'd used for hunting (running low at that point) for defence and fortifies his home in case the cannibals discover his presence on the island.

One day, Crusoe finds that a Spanish Galleon has run aground on the island during a storm, but his hopes for rescue are dashed when he discovers that the crew abandoned ship.

A plan is devised wherein the Spaniard would return to the mainland with Friday's father and bring back the others, build a ship, and sail to a Spanish port.

Before the Spaniards return, an English ship appears; the sailors have staged a mutiny against their captain and intend to leave him and those still loyal to him on the island.

With their ringleader executed by the captain, the mutineers take up Crusoe's offer to remain on the island rather than being returned to England as prisoners to be hanged.

"[12] However, Robinson Crusoe is far from a copy of Rogers' account: Becky Little argues three events that distinguish the two stories: "The economic and dynamic thrust of the book is completely alien to what the buccaneers are doing," Lambert says.

[3] Severin also discusses another publicized case of a marooned man named only as Will, of the Miskito people of Central America, who may have led to the depiction of Friday.

It was intended to be the last part of his stories, according to the original title page of the sequel's first edition, but a third book was published (1720), Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World.

The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity."

He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understand, and ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land.

The book tells the story of how Robinson becomes closer to God, not through listening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst nature with only a Bible to read.

It has even been speculated that God the Guide of Youth inspired Robinson Crusoe because of a number of passages in that work that are closely tied to the novel.

In classical, neoclassical and Austrian economics, Crusoe is regularly used to illustrate the theory of production and choice in the absence of trade, money, and prices.

Novak cites Ian Watt's extensive research[29] which explores the impact that several Romantic Era novels had against economic individualism, and the reversal of those ideals that takes place within Robinson Crusoe.

Early critics, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, admired it, saying that the footprint scene in Crusoe was one of the four greatest in English literature and most unforgettable; more prosaically, Wesley Vernon has seen the origins of forensic podiatry in this episode.

[33] It has inspired a new genre, the Robinsonade, as works such as Johann David Wyss' The Swiss Family Robinson (1812) adapt its premise and has provoked modern postcolonial responses, including J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986) and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (in English, Friday, or, The Other Island) (1967).

[35] Its success led to many imitators; and castaway novels, written by Ambrose Evans, Penelope Aubin, and others, became quite popular in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, published seven years after Robinson Crusoe, may be read as a systematic rebuttal of Defoe's optimistic account of human capability.

In Treasure Island, author Robert Louis Stevenson parodies[citation needed] Crusoe with the character of Ben Gunn, a friendly castaway who was marooned for many years, has a wild appearance, dresses entirely in goat skin, and constantly talks about providence.

In Wilkie Collins' most popular novel, The Moonstone, one of the chief characters and narrators, Gabriel Betteredge, has faith in all that Robinson Crusoe says and uses the book for a sort of divination.

His novel explores themes including civilization versus nature, the psychology of solitude, as well as death and sexuality in a retelling of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe story.

Other stories that share similar themes to Robinson Crusoe include William Golding's Lord Of The Flies (1954),[37][38] J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (1974),[39] and Andy Weir's The Martian (2011).

[44] A pantomime version of Robinson Crusoe was staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1796, with Joseph Grimaldi as Pierrot in the harlequinade.

Variations on the theme include the 1954 Miss Robin Crusoe, with a female castaway, played by Amanda Blake, and a female Friday, and in 1965 we get the film adaptation Robinson Crusoe on Mars, starring Paul Mantee, with an alien Friday portrayed by Victor Lundin and an added character played by Adam West.

[47] Given the nature and location of the script, Bluemke knew from the beginning that the film would require a certain amount of nudity in order to give it a sense of realism and authenticity.

At the time, he was under the impression that the nudity depicted in the film would be condoned as natural and innocent, given the backdrop of the story, and given that the actors involved were prepubescent boys.

The 2000 film Cast Away, with Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an island for many years, also borrows much from the Robinson Crusoe story.

Dramatised by Steve Chambers and directed by Marion Nancarrow, and starring Roy Marsden and Tom Bevan, it was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 1998.