A man shipwrecked on a desert island survives by industry, faith, and ingenuity for twenty-eight years. Defoe wrote this at fifty-nine, after a career in journalism and failed business ventures, and created what many consider the first English novel. The prose is plain, the detail obsessive: we know exactly how Crusoe makes his bread. The novel is about self-reliance, about empire, about the Protestant work ethic, about the European encounter with the non-European world. Friday's arrival raises questions Defoe did not intend. The book remains the origin myth of bourgeois individualism.