Robinson Crusoe

Running away to sea brings adventure and wealth, but then come shipwreck and a desperate struggle for survival. Defying his parents, Robinson Crusoe goes to sea. He is captured by pirates but escapes to Brazil. He makes a fortune using slave labor to grow tobacco and sugar. He sails to Africa to bring back more slaves but is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Everyone else is drowned. For over twenty years he lives alone. He learns to hunt and fish and make shelter. Then the cannibals arrive. Will this be the end of his adventure - or the chance to escape?

Real Reads are accessible texts designed to support the literacy development of primary and lower secondary age children while introducing them to the riches of our international literary heritage. Each book is a retelling of a work of great literature from one of the world’s greatest cultures, fitted into a 64-page book, making classic stories, dramas and histories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts, to language students wanting access to other cultures, and to adult readers who are unlikely ever to read the original versions.

Daniel Defoe (c.1659–1661) was an English writer best known now for his "Robinson Crusoe".



The Scottish novelist and academic MARGARET ELPHINSTONE's first novel was published in 1987. Her latest, The Gathering Night, was published in 2009. She is Emeritus Professor of Scottish Literature at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. Apart from spells of academic work in the USA, she has spent most of her working life in various parts of Scotland including Shetland, Edinburgh and Glasgow.