Robinson Crusoe

Widely acknowledged as the first English novel, Daniel Defoe's adventure story of a shipwrecked sailor became an instant classic upon its publication in 1719 and the yardstick for countless castaway narratives to follow.
Robinson Crusoe, an English sailor, finds himself marooned on a desert island after the rest of his shipmates drown in a terrible wreck. He survives on the island for nearly three decades, domesticating livestock, cultivating plants, and constructing a modest home for himself. But his solitary existence is threatened when he discovers - in one of the most memorable moments in literature - another footprint in the sand. Robinson Crusoe is more than a great yarn, it is an allegory rife with moral and religious symbolism and significance, seen through the eyes of an ordinary man struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances.