Editing Daniel Defoe (section)

==== ''Robinson Crusoe'' ====
[[File:Daniel Defoe former house England.jpg|thumb|A house where Defoe once lived, near London, England]]
Published in 1719, when Defoe was in his late fifties,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Minto |first=William |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924013179902 |title=Daniel Defoe |publisher=Harper & Bros. |year=1879 |location=New York |language=en |oclc=562533988}}</ref> ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' relates the story of a man's shipwreck on a desert island for twenty-eight years and his subsequent adventures. Throughout its episodic narrative, Crusoe's struggles with faith are apparent as he bargains with God in times of life-threatening crises, but time and again he turns his back after his deliverances. He is finally content with his lot in life, separated from society, following a more genuine conversion experience.

In the opening pages of ''[[The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe]]'', the author describes how Crusoe settled in [[Bedfordshire]], married and produced a family, and that when his wife died, he went off on these further adventures. Bedford is also the place where the brother of "H. F." in ''A Journal of the Plague Year'' retired to avoid the danger of the plague, so that by implication, if these works were not fiction, Defoe's family met Crusoe in Bedford, from whence the information in these books was gathered. Defoe went to school in Newington Green with a friend named Caruso.

The novel has been assumed to be based in part on the story of the Scottish castaway [[Alexander Selkirk]], who spent four years stranded in the [[Juan Fernández Islands]],<ref name="autogenerated2006"/> but his experience is inconsistent with the details of the narrative.{{Cn|date=August 2024}}  The island Selkirk lived on, Más a Tierra (Closer to Land) was renamed [[Robinson Crusoe Island]] in 1966. It has also been supposed that Defoe may have also been inspired by a translation of a book by the [[Al-Andalus|Andalusian-Arab]] Muslim polymath [[Ibn Tufail]], who was known as "Abubacer" in Europe. The Latin edition was entitled ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan|Philosophus Autodidactus]]'';<ref>Nawal Muhammad Hassan (1980), ''Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A study of an early Arabic impact on English literature'', Al-Rashid House for Publication.</ref><ref>Cyril Glassé (2001), ''The New Encyclopedia of Islam'', Rowman Altamira, p. 202, {{ISBN|0-7591-0190-6}}.</ref><ref name="Amber">{{Cite journal |last=Haque |first=Amber |year=2004 |title=Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists |journal=Journal of Religion and Health |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=357–377 [369] |doi=10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z |jstor=27512819 |s2cid=38740431}}</ref><ref name="Wainwright">Martin Wainwright (22 March 2003) [http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,918454,00.html Desert island scripts], ''[[The Guardian]]''.</ref> [[Simon Ockley]] published an English translation in 1708, entitled ''The improvement of human reason, exhibited in the life of Hai ebn Yokdhan''.