Robinson Crusoe
Title-page
Preface
I was born in the year 1632


Title-page
The life and strange surprizing adventures
of Robinson Crusoe, a York mariner:

Who lived eight and twenty years,
all alone in an un-inhabited island
on the coast of America, near the mouth
of the great river of Oroonoque;

having been cast on shore by shipwreck,
wherein all the men perished but himself.

With account how he was at last as
strangely deliver'd by pyrates.

Written by himself.

London
Printed for W. Taylor at the
Ship-in-Pater-Noster-Row.
MDCCXIX.


Preface
If ever the story of any private man's
adventures in the world were worth
making publick, and were acceptable
when published, the editor of this
account thinks this will be so.

The wonders of this man's life
exceed all that (he thinks) is to be
found extant; the life of one man
being scarce capable of a greater
variety.

The story is told with modesty, with
seriousness, and with a religious
application of events to the uses
to which wise men always apply them,
viz., to the instruction of others
by this example, and to justify and
honour the wisdom of Providence in
all the variety of our circumstances,
let them happen how they will.

The editor believes the thing to be
a just history of fact; neither is
there any appearance of fiction in
it: And however thinks, because all
such things are dispatched, that
the improvement of it, as well to
the diversion as to the instruction
of the reader, will be the same;
and as such, he thinks, without
farther compliment to the world,
he does them a great service in
the publication.


I was born in the year 1632
I was born in the year 1632, in the city of
York, of a good family, tho' not of that
country, my father being a foreigner of
Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a
good estate by merchandise, and leaving off
his trade lived afterward at York, from
whence he had married my mother, whose
relations were named Robinson, a very good
family in that country, and from whom I was
called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual
corruption of words in England, we are now
called, nay, we call our selves and write our
name, Crusoe, and so my companions always
called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of which was
lieutenant collonel to an English regiment
of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by
the famous Coll. Lockhart, and was killed
at the battle near Dunkirk against the
Spaniards. What became of my second brother
I never knew any more than my father or
mother did know what was become of me.

Being the third son of the family and not
bred to any trade, my head began to be
filled very early with rambling thoughts.
My father, who was very ancient, had given
me a competent share of learning, as far
as house-education and a country free-
school generally goes, and designed me for
the law; but I would be satisfied with
nothing but going to sea, and my inclina-
tion to this led me so strongly against
the will, nay, the commands of my father,
and against all the entreaties and per-
swasions of my mother and other friends,
that there seemed to be something fatal
in that propension of nature tending
directly to the life of misery which was
to befal me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me
serious and excellent counsel against what
he foresaw was my design. He called me
one morning into his chamber, where he was
confined by the gout, and expostulated 
very warmly with me upon this subject.
He asked me what reasons more than a meer
wandring inclination I had for leaving
my father's house and my native country,
where I might be well introduced, and had
a prospect of raising my fortune by appli-
cation and industry, with a life of ease
and pleasure.

He told me it was for men of desparate
fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring,
superior fortune on the other, who went
abroad upon adventures, to rise by enter-
prize, and make themselves famous in
undertakings of a nature out of the common
road; that these things were all either
too far above me, or too far below me;
that mine was the middle state, or what
might be called the upper station of low
life, which he had found by long experience
was the best state in the world, the most
suited to human happiness, not exposed to
the miseries and hardships, the labour
and sufferings of the mechanick part of
mankind, and not embarrassed with the
pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the
upper part of mankind. He told me I might
judge of the happiness of this state by
this one thing, viz. that this was the
state of life which all other people
envied, that kings have frequently
lamented the miserable consequences of
being born to great things, and wished
they had been placed in the middle of
the two extremes, between the mean and
the great; that the wise man gave his
testinmony to this as the just standard
of true felicity, when he prayed to have
neither poverty or riches.