Crusoe
Subtitle: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the creation of a myth
By: Katherine Frank
Edition: 1st Pegasus books cloth ed.
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 338
ISBN-13: 9781605983349
Subjects: Robinson Crusoe; Robinson Crusoe (Defoe, Daniel); Castaways in literature; Characters; Robinson Crusoe (Fictitious character)
Other titles: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the creation of a myth
Description: "January 1719. A man sits at a table, writing. Nearly sixty, Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout and mired in political controversy and legal threats. But for the moment he is preoccupied by a younger man on a barren shore: Robinson Crusoe. Several miles south, another old man, Robert Knox, sits bent over a heavy volume published nearly forty years before. Knox's 'Historical Relation' was a best seller when it was published in 1681, just a year after he escaped from Ceylon and returned to England. Where did Crusoe come from? And what is the secret of his endurance? Crusoe explores the intertwined lives of two real men, Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox, and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book and its hero: the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe."--Provided by Publisher.
Notes: Originally published: London : Bodley Head, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Two writing men; title: Crusoe's secret; title: "Captivated"; title: Shipwrecked by land; title: "Having but little and wanting lesse"; title: Escape; title: Another escape; title: Stranger, author, captain; title: Captain Knox recaptivated; title: St. Helena; title: Captain Knox and Captain Singleton; title: Ancient mariners; title: Epilogue.