Understanding Robinson Crusoe’s Place in the Literature and Culture of Childhood

[para. 1]: “Robinson Crusoe has left a remarkable three-centuries long legacy. The novel was, from its initial publication in1719, wildly successful, with some forty editions appearing before the end of the eighteenth century. Translations into French, German, and Dutch appeared within a year, and it would go on to place second only to the Bible as the most widely translated literary work in publishing history. Crusoe’s story has also been retold and remediated into more forms and media than perhaps any other work of fiction. Literary imitations grew so common that they quickly became a sub-genre, the ‘Robinsonade’, a term coined by Johann Gottfried Schnabel to describe his own early example of the form, Die Insel Felsenburg (1731). A variety of abridged versions and epitomes, selling for half the price of the first edition or less, were on the market by the early 1720s, and as Jordan Howell remarks, these would prove more popular than the original, complete text, accounting for roughly three quarters of the hundreds of editions published during the eighteenth century.”