Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe, 1719.
Before you read: The book includes slavery, shipwreck, and colonial attitudes, including Crusoe’s treatment of Friday. Read it as an old novel with a grown-up, not as a guide to how people should treat each other.
Crusoe ignores his father’s advice, goes to sea, and ends up alone on an island after a wreck. He salvages tools, grows food, and builds a shelter. Years later he meets Friday, a man he rescues and then treats as a servant. Defoe helped invent the English novel of survival. The island chapters are full of practical detail. The book also carries the prejudices of an eighteenth-century English trader, and a modern reading has to say that out loud.
Public-domain text.