Robinson Crusoe: Restless Classics

About Daniel Defoe

About the Author:Daniel Defoe (c. 16601731) was an English writer journalist and spy who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest practitioners of the novel and helped popularize the genre in Britain. In some texts he is even referred to as one of the founders if not the founder of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer he wrote more than five hundred books pamphlets and journals on various topics (including politics crime religion marriage psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.About the Introducer:Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean American writer whose essays stories and novels are evocative portrayals of family relationships and her native Antigua. Settling in New York City when she left Antigua at age 16 she became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1976. Her books include the short story collection At the Bottom of the River (1983) the novels Annie John (1984) and Lucy (1990) the three-part essay A Small Place (1988) the novel The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and nonfiction book My Brother (1997). Her Talk of the Town columns for The New Yorker were collected in Talk Stories (2001) and in 2005 she published Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya. Her most recent book is the novel See Now Then (2013).About the Artist:Born in Mexico in 1958 Eko is a cartoonist engraver and painter. His wood etchings often erotic in nature and the focus of controversial discussion are part of a broader tradition in Mexican folk art popularized by José Guadalupe Posada. He has collaborated on projects for the New York Times the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Spanish daily El País in addition to having published numerous books in Mexico and Spain. He is the illustrator of three books in the Restless Classics series: Don Quixote Frankenstein and Robinson Crusoe.