Captain Singleton (Broadview Editions) - Softcover

Defoe, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554813417 ISBN 13: 9781554813414

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2019

Synopsis

Following the success of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe wrote a new fiction, the story of an English pirate whose success eclipsed every buccaneer the Atlantic world had seen. Featuring a haunted, unreliable narrator, a daring trek across the continent of Africa, and mercantile adventures in the China Seas, Captain Singleton is a tale of loneliness, brotherhood, and the lust for profit.

Appendices to this Broadview Edition include materials on pirate fiction, travel writing, and earlier pirate tales that may have provided models for Captain Singleton.

About this title

About the Author:

Manushag N. Powell is Professor of English at Purdue University.

Review:

“Manushag Powell’s excellent edition of Captain Singleton fills a need for teachers and students of Defoe and the eighteenth-century novel, since there is no widely available edition of this important work. Powell’s introduction is informative about Defoe and about the eighteenth century’s fascination with pirates. Her copious annotation of the text is judicious; the supplementary readings of other pirate and travel narratives from the period provide very useful contexts for Defoe’s novel.” ― John Richetti, University of Pennsylvania, Emeritus

“Captain Singleton, while fascinating, is in many ways a bewildering text for twenty-first-century readers. Rather than attempt to tame it, Powell expertly guides us into its most perplexing and ambiguous aspects, helping us see how fictional projects depart from historical ones, even as fiction and history inform each other. By refusing to resolve the text’s ‘narrative enigmas,’ the introduction urges us toward thinking critically and imaginatively about the tale’s more challenging components. This edition presents Singleton as an opportunity to practice ways of reading that will give readers purchase on a wide array of eighteenth-century prose fictions.” ― Eugenia Zuroski, McMaster University

“I can think of nobody better than pirate expert Manushag Powell to edit Defoe’s ripping yarn of the adventures of Captain Bob Singleton, pirate extraordinaire. Her well-judged introduction provides generous intellectual context for new readers of this absorbing novel of global travel and international trade. The excitement and possibilities, as well as the consequences, of European expansionism are brought to readers’ attention through Powell’s inclusion in her appendices of a series of short extracts from the experiences of other eighteenth-century travellers. By using this excellent new edition, students and teachers alike will be able not only to appreciate the importance of Captain Bob within his eighteenth-century context, but also to understand his place in the history of pirate lives and literature.” ― Claire Jowitt, University of East Anglia

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1554813417
• ISBN 13: 9781554813414
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424
• Editor: Powell Manushag N.