Wyss's attitude toward its education is in line with the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many chapters involve Christian-oriented moral lessons such as frugality, husbandry, acceptance, and cooperation.

But Wyss's novel is also modeled after Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, an adventure story about a shipwrecked sailor first published in 1719.

[1] The book presents a geographically impossible array of large mammals and plants that probably could never have existed together on a single island, for the children's education, nourishment, clothing, and convenience.

An 1814 French adaptation by Isabelle de Montolieu and 1824 continuation (from chapter 37), Le Robinson suisse, ou, Journal d'un père de famille, naufragé avec ses enfants, added further adventures of Fritz, Ernest, Jack, and Franz.

[1] The closest English translation to the original is that of the Juvenile Library in 1816, published as The Family Robinson Crusoe, or, Journal of a Father Shipwrecked, with his Wife and Children, on an Uninhabited Island, in two volumes, by the husband-and-wife team William Godwin and Mary Jane Clairmont[1][2], reprinted by Penguin Classics.

"[3] Around the same year, an abridged version of 112 pages by "I. F. M." was published, which told the story entirely in words of only one syllable (excepting some proper nouns, i.e.

The ship's crew evacuates without them, so William, Elizabeth, and their four sons (Fritz, Ernest, Jack, and Francis) are left to survive alone.

The ship's cargo of livestock (including a cow, a donkey, two goats, six sheep, a ram, a pig, chickens, ducks, geese, and pigeons), guns and powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace and provisions have survived.

There is also a great store of firearms and ammunition, hammocks for sleeping, carpenter's tools, lumber, cooking utensils, silverware, and dishes.

Initially, they construct a treehouse, but as time passes (and after Elizabeth is injured climbing the stairs down from it), they settle in a more permanent dwelling in part of a cave.