How David Copperfield drew on Robinson Crusoe
A documented line of influence: Charles Dickens demonstrably engaged Daniel Defoe’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe · 1719
EnlightenmentThe influenced
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens · 1850
The Age of the NovelRelevance
6/10
On David Copperfield’s page
- That famous Chapter 4 passage — the father's small library that saves David — names Robinson Crusoe among the books he reads himself out of misery into
- Defoe wrote the pioneering English first-person autobiographical narrative; David Copperfield is Dickens's first attempt at that same intimate I
- Knowing what Crusoe meant to a solitary child sharpens exactly what those books are doing for David
On Robinson Crusoe’s page
- The book on the lonely boy's shelf — Robinson Crusoe is one of the novels young David inherits in Chapter 4, the reading that keeps him alive
- It was Dickens's own childhood reading too, and David Copperfield is his first novel told in the first person — the autobiographical I that Defoe pioneered
- Read the original solitary survivor's account, then watch a Victorian boy survive on it