The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

The image of Robinson, who overcomes all the hardships of life, is familiar to us from childhood. The creator of this character Daniel Defoe was born in 1663 in London in the family of a simple butcher. Craving for writing woke up in him early. Even before the emergence of his famous "Robinson" he was considered in England a gifted writer, and after from under his pen came out a lot of works. Why did the description of Robinsonade glorified the name of Defoe in the world? For England at that time it was a new kind of literature. It is not by chance that after "Robinson" there was a steady demand for such pseudo-documentary prose. Secondly, Defoe described a new type of man. Being in constant dialog with God, he, however, independently solves all the difficult problems and tasks that life puts before him. It was such a deeply believing man-tough worker and man-fighter who was the ideal of English Protestantism. In Soviet publications of Robinson, editors invariably discarded this religious component of the novel, which turned Defoe's famous work into almost childish literature. In this edition, the text is given in full, unabridged. It includes the second part of the novel, almost unknown to the domestic reader. The text of the famous novel by Daniel Defoe is given in translation by Lyubov Alekseevna Murakhina-Aksenova. She spent her childhood in Germany, where the surname of her father - von Zeppelin - was well known. Having given up a solid inheritance in favor of her sister, she moved to Russia. She studied at the Medical and Surgical Academy, worked as a telephonist, engaged in underground political activity. And yet the main thing in her life was translation. She independently mastered eight languages, read Sanskrit, knew English well. Not surprisingly, her translation of "Robinson" is very faithful to the text of the original. The book is decorated with drawings by the talented English illustrator and graphic artist Walter Stanley Paget. The future artist was born in 1863. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts with a gold medal, and then for a long time was engaged in illustrating books and magazines. He was especially scrupulous in depicting the costumes of his characters, which helped him in the late XIX century when working on "Robinson" - all the drawings in this book bribe with their detailed authenticity. In addition to Defoe, Walter Paget illustrated works by Scott and Stevenson. His older brother Sidney Paget was also an artist; he made history as the illustrator of the Sherlock Holmes series of stories. In this edition, the text of Daniel Defoe's world-famous novel "The Life, Extraordinary and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" translated by L. A. Murakhina-Aksenova is given in full, without abridgments, which for a long time made the first part of this dilogy perceived exclusively as a children's book. The second part of the novel is virtually unknown to domestic readers. In the design of this edition are used drawings by the talented English illustrator and graphic artist Walter Stanley Paget.