Introduction

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was published on 25 April 1719. It was an immediate commercial success, and within a fortnight its publisher William Taylor had rushed out a second edition, followed a month later by a third, and a fourth in August. By that time pirate publishers were also cashing in on its popularity. A pirated Dublin edition had appeared in June, and at the beginning of August a London publisher, Thomas Cox, had produced an abridgement in duodecimo, priced at two shillings to undercut Taylor’s octavo editions which cost five shillings. Other piracies followed. An ill-printed duodecimo published in late August or early September gave the name of the hero as ‘Robeson Cruso’. Then, on 7 October 1719, the enterprising proprietor of a single-sheet newspaper entitled The Original London Post, or Heathcot’s Intelligence began serialising an abridged version of Defoe’s novel. It appeared in seventy-eightof more adventure to follo instalments up to 30 March 1720, representing one of the earliest examples of fiction being reprinted in serial form. ¹