The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe

• Foreword
  
• My family, my nature, my first voyage
  
• My second voyage, my third voyage, my life among the Moors
  
• My flight along the coast, Xury's terror, my salvation
  
• My fortunes reverse, my plantation, my foolishness
  
• My fourth voyage, the unlock'd door, shipwrecked
  
• My island, the ship, useful things
  
• My new home, goats, my calendar
  
• My papers and books, my account, my chair and table
  
• My journal, my adventure recounted, a miracle
  
• My island moves, the ship returns, my illness
  
• The dream lord, my revelation, my protections
  
• fruitful valley, strange behaviors, my anniversary
  
• My first crops, my strange discoveries, my second anniversary
  
• My scare-crows, first words, my third year inventions
  
• Years go by, my sea voyage, the ominous voice
  
• More time, my herd, my condition
  
• The foot print, my terrors, my decisions
  
• The dark church, my plans my rational mind
  
• My new cave, dark symbols, my resolution
  
• A new shipwreck, useless wealth, my decision
  
• My dream companion, the savages, the prisoner
  
• My new servant, many lessons, two monsters
  
• Old beliefs, the moving island, the fallen
  
• Talk of boats, bearded men, my design
  
• The dark church again, my battle-orders, Friday's reunion
  
• The uninhabitable island, the harvest, our boat sails away
  
• Another ship, captives, my first victory
  
• My new allies, villains, fear the island
  
• More battles, the unseen ruler, the body
  
• Prisoners and hostages, taking the ship, the beast fights death
  
• Final preparations, those left behind, my deliverance
  
• My return, old friends, my fortunes reverse
  
• My travels, loup garou, my awful damnation
  
• My lies, my last voyage, back to my island
  

Throughout history, it's been the nature of storytellers to make their tale fit the audience, no matter what the truth of that tale may be. Most people are horrified to read the unedited fairy tales that were popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Many college students are stunned by the action-packed tale of
Beowulf
printed in its true form as a long epic poem. Even the epics
The Odyssey
and
The Iliad
are dry on the page without a skilled translation.

In a like manner, when writing out the biography of Robinson Crusoe, budding writer and pamphleteer Daniel Defoe decided on several edits to the assembled journals and accounts that made up the manuscript. While there were numerous popular tales of shipwrecked mariners at the time, Crusoe's experiences were so singular and unnatural that they far outshone the tales of contemporary castaways such as Alexander Selkirk and Henry Pitman. Still, Defoe felt certain changes needed to be made if Crusoe's story were to receive any sort of audience (indeed, if it was even to see print).

Chief among these changes, alas, was a personal bias. Defoe, a Presbyterian dissenter who once debated becoming a minister, felt the need to include numerous passages on Christianity, faith, and devotion in the manuscript, contrary to Crusoe's well-documented dislike of organized religion (having been raised in England during the religiously-conflicted reign of Charles I, at a time shortly after the Spanish Inquisition had burned almost a dozen people for witchcraft in Europe). In an angry 1721 letter to Jonathan Swift, rebutting that author's latest criticism of
Robinson Crusoe
, Defoe justifies the excessive additions by the belief it was impossible for a man to spend so much time in isolation without turning to Jesus Christ in some regular form or another.

In a similar vein, Defoe also decided that Crusoe
must
have tried to escape the island. This belief, however, posed the problematic question of, if such a capable man had built a boat, why did he remain stranded for over a quarter-century? Thus, Defoe's account shows Crusoe repeatedly building canoes and boats, yet through a series of flimsy constructions never once reaching the nearby island of Trinidad.

As a historical note, Crusoe was enraged by the random omissions and additions to his biography, which made him alternately appear to be a bumbling fool, a zealot, or a senile old man. At least one account says he was infuriated by the idea he spent 27 years on his island carrying a parasol to block the sun. Over the irreverent matter of "the dancing bear" inserted at the end of Defoe's text, Crusoe was driven into a rage and threatened the writer with bodily violence at least three times. The writer was intimidated enough by the old man that he did not attempt to publish the work until a few months after Crusoe's reported death at the then-remarkable age of 87.

To his credit, when Defoe first edited the journals and accounts of Crusoe, he took great pains to maintain the original (and often creative) spellings and grammar that his worldly-yet-uneducated subject had used. For example, like so many dabblers at writing, Crusoe thought commas were not so much placed as scattered like ashes. He was also, if Defoe’s manuscript is to be believed, the creator of the run-on sentence.

In the three centuries since, countless publishers and scholars have "improved" the manuscript. Misspelled or inconsistently spelled words have been replaced and grammar adjusted to modern standards with little regard for the flavor of the original tale. This has resulted in hundreds of varying editions being produced over the years.

Faced with the decision of which edition was to be judged “correct,” I've done the same as many scholars before me and satisfied my own ego, falling back on the interpretation of the tale I was first familiar with. While this version is not as raw as the original manuscript, it still contains far more of Crusoe's original spellings and phrasings than many readers are used to. I have also taken the liberty of dividing the book into chapters, of a sort, where the narrative seemed most inclined for a break.

All of this does, of course, skirt around the elephant in the room, as it were. This edition of
Robinson Crusoe
has been drawn from the original accounts and journals, few copies of which are known to exist. These original documents reveal Crusoe's exile, and indeed much of his life, to be a far darker and more ominous tale than most editions have shown. Seen in this new light, some of these facts will have the manuscript dismissed as a work of pure fiction at best and trite fantasy at worst, even though many of the corroborating elements have always remained in Defoe's more popular version.

This version of that manuscript was first found amidst the papers of writer, historian, and bibliophile Howard P. Lovecraft a few years after his death in 1937. Lovecraft had footnoted an amazing amount of the manuscript and cross-referenced it with certain texts and histories available at the Old College Library of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Curwen Rare Books Library of Miskatonic University. Those footnotes have allowed me to simplify some of Crusoe's more poetic and elaborate descriptions in this abridged edition, and also to put names to many things Defoe found unnameable.

It may also be noted that this edition contains several more proper names than previously published versions. Thanks here must again go to Lovecraft and his extensive research. The writer spent countless hours sifting through historical documents in several languages for birth records, death notices, and other hints at the numerous identities Crusoe himself was oblique about, and Defoe's changes only concealed more.

The issue of time and dates throughout the manuscript should also be acknowledged. At this point in history, England was still using the Julian calendar while many European countries (most notably Spain and Portugal, which figure heavily into the tale) had switched to the modern Gregorian calendar, and there is evidence Crusoe switches freely between the two. While logs, harbor records, and shipping manifests allow us to pinpoint certain moments in the narrative (Lovecraft notes a special thanks to the Cape Cod Maritime Museum), Crusoe's years on the island are documented only by himself. He gives numerous dates throughout his records, yet they very rarely match with one another and inconsistencies are common. At one point in the manuscript October comes just seven months after the previous November, and mid-December follows just two weeks later. Some see this inaccuracy as a sign of Crusoe's degenerating sanity, using the rest of the manuscript as evidence thereof. Lovecraft himself notes the time inconsistencies only occur during Crusoe's years on the island, and sees it as a sign of just how dangerous that place is.

As a final historical note, this view was shared by the Royal British Navy and the modern Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force. After the rediscovery of Crusoe's island in 1890, and the subsequent investigation and explorations, the British fleet began an unofficial blockade that lasted through World War II. When Trinidad and Tobago became an independent nation in 1962, this blockade became a state-mandated 10 mile quarantine zone around the island. To this day two TTDF coast guard large patrol craft are always on maneuvers there.

--P. C.

Los Angeles, March 1st, 2010

I was born on the last day of the full moon in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, tho’ not of that country, my father being a foreigner who had fled the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen and settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson and from whom I was called Robinson Kreisszahn. By the usual corruption of words in England we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write, our name Crusoe.

I had two elder brothers, both of the same bloodline and inheritance as myself. One was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk when he was run thru with a silver saber. What became of my second brother I was never told, though I was led to guess he had succumb'd to the life of the beast afore I was old enough to know him.

Being the third son of the family, and bred with the wild blood of my sire, my head began to be fill’d very early with rambling thoughts. My father had given me a competent share of learning and designed me for the law. But I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea. My inclination led me so strongly against the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature, tending to the life of misery which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious counsel one morning against what he foresaw was my design. He asked me what reasons more than a mere wandering inclination I had for leaving his house and my native country, where I had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and safety. Mine, he said, was a life of legend hidden by necessity. One ruled by the Moon and her brilliance, one which he had found was best suited to a quiet life of stability and routine. He bid me observe it and I should always find the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind. The middle station had the fewest disasters. Peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune. This way men went silently and smoothly through the world and comfortably out of it. Not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head. Not harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace, and the body of rest. Nor hunted by the mobs of townsfolk and churchmen. Not enraged with the animal passion of the beast or the secret hunger for flesh.

After this he press’d me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the young man, not to precipitate myself into miseries which the life I was born in provided against. He would do well for me and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had been just recommending to me. To close, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed. Tho’ my father said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me that if I did take this foolish step God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel, when there might be none to assist in my control or recovery.