Robinson Crusoe in Words

Daniel Defoe’s most famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, was rewritten by Mary Godolphin (the pseudonym of Lucy Aikin) into single-syllable words so that young readers could enjoy the plot.

Based on Daniel Defoe’s most famous work, which is considered by many to be the first English novel (1719), she rewrote this novel.

The story begins with the universal quest: the young man in Britain, torn between his safe home and his hunger for adventure, breaks away from his loving father and sails away into the unknown. After a series of harrowing escapes, he's shipwrecked on a desert island.

With only a few supplies from the ship he builds a house, a boat and a new life. His island is not wholly uninhabited, though, and there is the exciting but ominous presence of cannibals who Crusoe occasionally encounters and saves a native from. The latter becomes his servant, Man Friday.

The crew of a mutinying ship finally rescue our hero, but it is his adventure on the island that interests us. The story has remained popular ever since its publication and it spawned two sequels: later in 1719 with The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and a third part, The Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe, in 1720 which consisted of moral essays. The first novel, though, is particularly notable for its detailed verisimilitude allowing us to believe in the situation - something assisted by the uncomplicated language used by the author.