Good Morning, Mr Crusoe

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, recounting the adventures of a man who traded in slaves and despised women and was good at DIY, was first published in 1719. The novel became a mainstay of children’s literature and was incorporated into an educational system designed to promote imperialist ambitions. Good Morning, Mr Crusoe looks back to boys’ boarding schools in the 1960s, surveys Crusoe’s fictional descendants in a range of 20th-century novels, and questions the sacred status of Eng Lit. The legacy of Defoe’s novel: racism and misogyny embedded in the fabric of British society.