Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth, Katherine Frank, c. 2012; 823 FRA.

Chapter One: Two Writing Men
London, 1719

The biography of two men, two writers.

• begins in 1719
• Daniel DeFoe, Stoke Newington House, south of London; broke; with a family to support; 59 or 60 years old
• in his head: a much younger man, Robinson Crusoe, named after a long-dead school friend, Timothy Cruso (sic)
• Robert Knox, two miles south of Stoke Newington, age 80 years old
• in the parish of St Peter le Poer
• writing letter to his cousin, the Reverend John Strype
• well off, no children, no family to support
• retired captain of the British East India Company
• original An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, 1681, a sensation, bestseller
• published within a year or his miraculous escape
• published by Richard Chiswell, Printer to the Royal Society
• included: the account of man held in captivity for twenty years

Robert Knox:

• sailed for the British East India Company
• ship disabled at Ceylon, SE tip of India, mostly controlled by Dutch East India Company; both great rivals; ship: Anne
• Dutch had abandoned their fort at Trincomalee which was now governed by native governor
• hoped he would be safe there; no such luck; captured and brought to interior; held by natives.
  
• interior still controlled by King of Kandy (Kingdom of Candy Uda in the island of Ceylon).
• escaped: book, September, 1681
• 1685: returns to England after sailing to India, Bantam, Batavia and Tonkin (p. 6)
  
• publisher wanted second book; many more tales, but by 1719, still no second book
• other islands: Java, Sumatra, Madagaascar, St Helena, Barbados
• his second book -- a manuscript lost in 1719 and didn't reappear for 270 years

Daniel Defoe:
meanwhile, April 25 April, 1719, a printer -- William Taylor -- registers a book in the Stationers' Hall his "complete share"
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. [Note: York.]

1719
Robert Knox's book: foundered, sunk, lost
Daniel Defoe's book: about to be published;

Chapter Two: Crusoe's Secret
London, 1719 - 1720

Begins with:

• The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. [Note: York]; first published in April, 1719.

The subtitle: "Lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone on an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Accouut how he was at last strangely delivered by Pyrates."

364 pages
bore the signs of a hasty, cheap production;
only one illustration

an instant bestseller

Later, Robinsonades was coined:The Swiss Family Robinson, Coral Island, Treasure Island

has attained "the status of myth."

Again, remember, this was Defoe's book.

Putative author: Robinson Crusoe, but again, that man seemed not to exist, though he was heavily sought.

Defoe publish nearly everyting he wrote anonymously or under a pseudonym.

often contradictory with regard to feelings on authorship, anonymity, etc.

Defoe is one of the most prolific writers in English, but his exact number of works attributed to him has varied over the centuries from 101 to a staggering 570.

But, September 28, 1719 -- just five months after publication, his cover was blown. Authorship discovered. 

a 48-page, one-shilling pamphlet

the pamphlet, interestingly, published anonymously. But no secret that the author, like Defoe, was another London scribbler and long-time rival of Defoe, named Charles Gildon.

1719, Charles Gildon: his situation even bleaker than Defoe's in Stoke Newington or Knox's in St Peter le Poer.
born in 1665, in Dorset, Roman Catholic, p. 18