Son of a middle-class Englishman, Robinson Crusoe puts out to sea to find adventure. And on one of his voyages he is shipwrecked on a deserted South American island for thirty-five years. After scavenging his broken ship for useful items, he had only his skills and ingenuity to keep him alive as there was to be no one else on the island for the next twenty-four years. In the middle of that twenty-fourth year he rescued a native about to be eaten by cannibals who were using his island for a place of feasting. Crusoe named this man Friday, after the day of his rescue. Friday became his faithful servant and friend, even returning with him to England after their deliverance by an English ship.

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character (whose real name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson, is among the founders of the English novel.

From Booklist: One of the first novels ever written, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), the classic adventure story of a man marooned on an island for nearly 30 years, is part of our culture.