Crusoe

by Katherine Frank

A remarkable literary hybrid―part biography, part detective story―about the enduring figure of Robinson Crusoe. 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 the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe , and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe. 12 pages of black & white illustrations and maps

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Literature, Books About Books

368 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2012

Reviews

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not often that you read such an interesting book that so completely fails in its stated intent. What Katherine Frank is trying to do is write the interlinked biographies of two men, Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox, to show how the real-life adventures of Robert Knox were the key inspiration behind Defoe's creation of Robinson Crusoe. In that, she fails. But the failure is probably more interesting than her succeeding would have been. Yes, she does show quite clearly that Defoe had read Knox's book of his 20-year captivity on Ceylon (Sri Lanka as it is now), and indeed that he'd simply lifted, whole and entire, some of Knox's work into his own (in particular the seldom read sequel to Robinson Crusoe). But Defoe stole from other writers with as much panache and as little guilt as he defrauded tradesmen and bankers. Given the prevalence of nautical yarns of adventure and shipwreck at the time, and Defoe's evident reading of other works in the genre, there's nothing to say that Knox was the key influence on Crusoe. In fact, quite the opposite, as what defines Crusoe apart from all the real-world shipwrecked sailors is that he never 'went native'. Rather, he recreated his lonely isle as a little England, remaking it in his own image. That is something that very much comes from Defoe's own life, and how he remade his disasters and failures as triumphs. In some ways, Defoe was the first of the positive thinkers.

So if Frank fails in what she intended, where does she succeed? For one, in her vivid portrayal of Robert Knox. At the age of 19, accompanying his father on a voyage to the Indies aboard an East Indiaman, storm damage forced them to land in Trincomalee in Ceylon. At the time, the western coastal areas of Ceylon were controlled by the Dutch, but the Kings of Kandy maintained their independence in the mountainous interior of the island. Coming ashore, Knox, his father and a party of twenty sailors were initially welcomed by representatives of the king, but then taken captive.

It was a strange sort of captivity. The men were split into ones and twos and assigned to villages, for the villagers to look after. They were free to move about within bounds, and given food and accommodation, but they were not free to leave. There was, in the end, no meeting with the king, but just this ongoing captivity. It has the quality of a tropical, multicoloured Kafka (if such a thing can exist). Knox's father died after a couple of years captivity, but on his deathbed his son promised him that he would endure and escape, to carry word back to England to the rest of the family of what had happened to Knox senior.

After 20 years (20 years!), Knox and another member of the crew did escape, making their way overland to a Dutch fort in the north east of the island and then taking ship back home. During the long voyage home, Knox wrote a detailed account of his time in Ceylon, and the geography and customs of the people of the island. Returning, a stranger, to England, Knox found it so very different from his departure. The Commonwealth was finished; there was a king again, and he needed employment. So, a year later, Knox set off sailing again, this time captain of an East Indiaman. But before he left he gave his manuscript, which had been worked through by his cousin and also the great scientist Robert Hooke who had befriended Knox on his return, and in his absence the book was published and became a best seller.

Frank tells this story wonderfully well, and brings Knox vividly to life. She visited Sri Lanka and tracked down the locations where Knox lived. Indeed, for my part as the son of a Sri Lankan, I would have happily had her write Knox's biography alone, and to have learned more of what he learned and recorded of the country then. This is where the book is at its best, but because of the shared narrative, we don't spend as much time in the tropics with Knox as we might.

On the other hand, the time spent with money grubbing Defoe in the streets of London is just as vivid and exciting. It's a shame Frank didn't write two books, one on each man, with maybe a nod towards Knox's influence on Defoe, and a big embrace towards the strange way a writer will take influences and ideas and remake them under the demands of the blank page.

But, nevertheless, Crusoe was a real pleasure to read.

[Carolinemawer · Rating 4 out of 5]

O I enjoyed myself reading this book!
Smoothly written. An easy read. Stuffed with facts without being stuffy. A great back and forth between the two narrative threads.
Thinking as a writer: I loved the comparison of the two writer's writing habits - Knox (one life, one book); Defoe (a million lives, thousands of books)
Thinking as a reader: well, I know I really liked it. But the other reviews suggest it was .. o what shall I say .. too difficult? Too much content?
So, back thinking as a writer .. I need to take note.

[Zandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the parts of this book about Daniel Defoe and his masterpiece. However I was less and less interested by the life and adventures of Robert Knox, who is supposed to have inspired Defoe's story. I also wanted more detail about the other individuals that have also been regarded as the 'original' Crusoe: Frank should, I think, have justified her view of Knox as having had the greatest influence. Finally, I was hoping to gain more of an understanding why Crusoe has been so influential over the centuries, while Knox's own book fell into obscurity?

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really lively retelling of Defoe’s writing of Crusoe with the real life Crusoe Robert Knox that he plagiarized from. It’s a great way to learn about all the main players of the late 17th century and to place England within the larger world context. It’s economic and intellectual history masquerading as literature studies. The back and forth between Knox and Defoe keeps it chronological but can be a bit disconcerting. I wish there was better editing though—at least 2 dates are miswritten. 1864 instead of 1684 for instance.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great surprise. Not only does it give us a detailed picture of the life and times and work of Daniel Defoe, but in parallel it does much the same thing for the more obscure Robert Knox, who was, in part at least, a kind of unwitting model for Robinson Crusoe.
Frank does a great job of intertwining the two lives, and her research is phenomenal. Not only do we get to know and understand the two men of the title, but stories about family members, creditors, publishers, East India Company officials, strange kings of countries that were almost entirely unknown in the 1700s, adventures, disasters and life and death all jam pack the book.
The astonishing and inventive and prolific Defoe is contrasted with the quietly adventurous, steadfast and pious Knox. Defoe's adventures were all had in his homeland, and some of them were very unpleasant (being pilloried, for one); Knox's were had abroad, and not only was he twice left to his own devices on foreign soil, he more than once had to start from scratch in order to maintain his livelihood. Defoe wrote a plethora of pamphlets and books - the greatest of them all in his old age - while Knox worked constantly on one book that was published after his first exile, and then revised and added to continually for the rest of his life. Not only that, this version of the book survived strange adventures of its own.
There are some wonderful things in the book: amazing coincidences, and awful circumstances, and things that make you laugh out loud at the oddity of life. A great read.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

A parallel is attempted between the actual story of Robert Knox's arbitrary incarceration in the Ceylonese highlands and its possible influence on Defoe's concept of Robinson Crusoe.The argument seemed arbitrary to me, and only mildly persuasive, and I skipped over a lot of the Knox story, being more interested in knowing about Defoe. Always a rabble-rouser, religious dissident, hack writer of tracts and pamphlets on all sorts of topics (including, apparently, sex advice for married couples), and semi-successful entrepreneur, Defoe wrote all of his most enduring works (Moll Flanders, Roxana and Journal of the Plague Year) in the last decade of his life (he lived to 70).
A sort of academic work, delving deep into the historical record, citing all sorts of 17th- and 18th-century texts, journals, notes and memoirs. As such, there were lots of dry, academic sections. The sections on Defoe were the most interesting to me. He survived religious persecution, including a sentence of standing in the stocks, which the author describes as being both humiliating and physically agonizing, a much more serious sentence than is sometimes understood as sort of an amusing public ritual, business successes and failures, family crises and eventual public acclaim for Crusoe, which was immediately a sensation and a best-seller.

[Joel Robb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure I'd enjoy reading about an old English author of a book that is a childhood favorite. I was fascinated. The 'story' (of Robert Knox, the son of a British merchant captain captured on Ceylon and "imprisoned" by the King of Kandy for 20 years) behind the epic story of Robinson Crusoe hooked me. In addition, the 'story' of the author and his rollercoaster of a life, was fascinating to say the least. I always enjoy when I can learn from a book. Frank does a superb job of painting the picture of turn of the 18th century England -- from the pillory to debtor's prison, to entrepreneurial ventures (gone wrong), book publishing, the Dutch and British East India Companies, merchant trading, privateers, mutineers, Ceylon, Batavia, St Helena, Madagascar, the King of Kandy, the fleeting lives of men at sea (scurvy, tropical disease, natives), scientific thought of the age, and so much more I gained from this packed and well researched book. I would advise reading Robinson Crusoe before tackling this book, and have Wikipedia ready to look at some maps and do some research on some of the historical events of the times. Once again, well done & thank you, Katherine Frank!

Future thoughts: read Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe?

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many scholars have debated the origins of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. In essence, Frank’s book contributes to this debate by noting sections Defoe copied and plagiarized from a contemporary, Robert Knox, a ship captain’s son and later a captain himself. However, this book is not a dry academic text tome. Frank narrates the lives of Defoe and Knox, their historical context and intersections, in an engaging and accurate way.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this was certainly a book worth reading. I knew nothing about Daniel Defoe before, but know a lot more now. Full of facts, and a bit like a detective story, you experience what life was like in the 1700s as the author takes you in and out of the life of Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and Captain Singleton. There are maps, notes and a good bibliography. Fascinating from start to finish.

[Nathan Hobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Knox's story reminds me that the mythology of my childhood - pirates, sailing ships, exotic lands - has a historical basis. Frank is alert to the drama and interest of his story and Defoe's. Offering these parallel lives gives insight into both, although the justification for it needed tweaking.

[Nicky Rossiter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent background on not only the book but the writer and the era.
In addition there is the tale of Robert Knox.
The information on DeFoe and his business dealings is great as is the reminder of how much has been influenced by the one book.
The analysis of Crusoe and how his time on the island parallels civilization and the trajectory of the British Empire is telling.

[Ishmael Soledad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew nothing of Daniel De Foe or Robert Knox before reading this. It was interesting and a good - if slightly disjointed at times - read. Setting aside the conclusions (that I am in no position to judge) the book was worth the effort and the price.

[Geoff Wall · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a complete misnomer! The book should really be called Robert Knox, Defoe and Crusoe. This is because the book is largely about Robert Knox. And an interesting tale it is. Well Worth reading on that basis. The Connections to Defoe are no more than of vague interest

[Ollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the perfect companion read to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. In it, Katherine Frank lays down her theory that Defoe's most famous creation was lifted from the memoirs of Robert Knox - one of Defoe's contemporaries. As a 19-year-old, Knox and his father took to the sea for trade on an East India Company ship only to find themselves imprisoned by the King of Kandy in Ceylon. For the next twenty years, Knox saw his father die, adopted a local child as his own and learned to live amongst Ceylon's people while always yearning to one day escape and return to England.

The first half of the book is a great read, going through Defoe's life in London and his constant struggles with bankruptcy and the law as well as Knox's life on Ceylon and his eventual escape. The second half drags a little when Katherine Frank goes into these men's successes and disappointments later in life. Descriptions of life in Hackney at the start of the 18th Century as well as the great English storm of 1703 (that fascinated both men) add to the enjoyment of this book as well as Frank's thoughts on how Crusoe eventually became a myth in our culture.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is January 1719. Nearly sixty, Daniel Defoe is mired in political controversy, legal threats and health issues, 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.

This book explores the real men and their stories. Defoe who imagined great adventures and Knox who lived and wrote about his real shipwreck adventure on the island of Ceylon. It then explores how their writings created a whole genre of adventure, lone-man survival stories especially ones modeled after Defoe's main character, Crusoe.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Crusoe" was obviously a labor of love to write, but it's a labor to read. It is rich with detail and conjecture. Probably too much of either. It is competently written, but it's dry enough to save you from a flash flood if you stand on it. I recommend "The Oxford Book of Exile" as a first choice if you need to compare the stories of marooned men.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was very educational, and I did like reading about the lives and adventures that inspired the epic tale of Robinson Crusoe. But I thought the author's style of writing was very dry most of the book, and could've been done in a more entertaining manner, so to speak.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the first half of this a bit of a slog - hence the time taken to read it - but, on coming back to it, I raced through the second half. An intriguing insight into two people about whom I knew very little - Daniel Defoe, and Robert Knox. Having never read any Defoe, maybe it's now time...