#daniel defoe

Here's an update to my book collection (2025). More is coming soon.

Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Louisa May Alcott - Little Women

Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility

Edith Wharton - The Age Of Innocence

Jane Austen - Emma

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary

Jane Austen - Northanger Abbey

Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth

Jane Austen - Persuasion

Louisa May Alcott - Good Wives

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter

Charlotte Bronte - The Professor

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (Part 1)

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina (Part 2)

Jane Austen - Mansfield Park

Anne Bronte - Agnes Grey

Thomas Hardy - Far from The Madding Crowd

William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair (Part 1)

William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair (Part 2)

Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos - Dangerous Liaisons

Alexandre Dumas fils - The Lady of the Camellias

Henry James - Washington Square

Louisa May Alcott - A Garland For Girls

Henry James - The Portrait of A Lady (Part 1)

Henry James - The Portrait of A Lady (Part 2)

Jane Austen - Lady Susan. The Watson. Sanditon

Anne Brontë - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbeville

Edith Wharton - The Mother’s Recompense

Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders

Henry James - The Wings of the Dove

Edith Wharton - The Customs of the Country

Kate Chopin - The Awakening

Jane Austen - Juvenilia  

George Eliot - Middlemarch (Part 1)

George Eliot - Middlemarch (Part 2)  

George Sand - Nanon

Henry James - The Ambassadors

Elizabeth Gaskell - Cranford

Thomas Hardy - Under The Greenwood Tree

Edith Wharton - Summer

George Sand - Indiana

Henry James - The Bostonians

George Eliot - Silas Marner

Henry James - The Golden Bowl (Part 1)

Henry James - The Golden Bowl (Part 2)  

Edith Wharton - The Twilight Sleep

Emily Eden - The Semi-Attached Couple

Edith Wharton - The Glimpses of the Moon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Lady Audley’s Secret

George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss

Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton 

Fanny Burney - Evelina 

George Sand - Little Fadette

Emily Eden - The Semi-detached House

Charlotte Brontë - Shirley (Part 1)

Charlotte Brontë - Shirley (Part 2)

Daniel Defoe - Lady Roxana

Theodor Fontane  - Effie Briest 

Edith Wharton - The Cliff

Thomas Hardy - Two on a Tower

Frances Hodgson Burnett - A Lady of Quality

Louisa May Alcott - Moods

Lucy Maud Montgomery - The Story Girl 

Elizabeth Gaskell - Ruth

Thomas Hardy - The Woodlanders

Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South

Matilde Serao - Fantasy

Thomas Hardy - A Pair of Blue Eyes 

Emilia Pardo Bazán - Sunstroke/Insolacion

Ann Radcliffe - The Romance of the Forest

Louisa May Alcott - A Long Fatal Love Chase

Charlotte Bronte - Vilette

Sybil Grace Brinton - Old Friends and New Fancies

Edith Wharton - Bunner Sisters

Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out

Margaret Oliphant - The Chronicles of Carlingford Series by Mrs. Oliphant

Edith Nesbit - The Incomplete Amorist

Virginia Woolf - Day and Night

Guy de Maupassant - Our Heart

Frances Trollope - The Widow Barnaby (Part 1)

Frances Trollope - The Widow Barnaby (Part 2)

Elizabeth Gaskell - Half a Lifetime Ago

"It is better to be led by a lion at the head of an army of sheep than by a sheep at the head of an army of lions."

Both novels are primarily survival stories centered on extreme isolation. A man is stranded in an environment that is inherently hostile to human life and is forced to reconstruct civilization from scraps through creativity, effort, and persistent routines. Crusoe recovers tools from a shipwreck; Mark Watney takes stock of NASA equipment. Crusoe domesticates an island; Watney grows potatoes on Mars, one at a time. In both stories, survival becomes less an adventure than a prolonged exercise in systems: keeping track of supplies, solving practical issues, recording procedures, and turning disorder into order.

What makes the comparison interesting is how clearly the ideological differences reveal the values of the societies that produced them.

Robinson Crusoe is deeply shaped by Protestant individualism, early capitalism, and colonial ideology. Crusoe’s first instinct upon isolation is ownership. He catalogs, measures, organizes, and transforms the island into property. Nature exists to be subdued, categorized, and made productive. The novel treats labor as spiritually meaningful; Crusoe’s survival is repeatedly tied to providence, repentance, and divine order. Isolation becomes almost a moral condition through which he rebuilds both himself and a miniature version of European civilization. His practical intelligence is framed as evidence of moral worth, but that intelligence is inseparable from imperial logic.

The Martian, meanwhile, largely secularizes that framework. Watney survives not through fate but through scientific knowledge, institutional expertise, and collaborative systems. Even when he is physically alone, he is never conceptually isolated in the way Crusoe is. His survival depends on centuries of accumulated science and eventually on global cooperation. Where Crusoe embodies the fantasy of the self-made man, Watney represents the idea that humanity’s technological systems are collectively resilient enough to overcome disaster. Modernity itself accompanies him onto Mars.

The two novels also differ in how they portray “frontiers.” Crusoe’s island becomes colonial territory almost immediately; the narrative assumes his right to possess, organize, rename, and rule it. Mars in The Martian functions less as conquered land than as an engineering problem. The language of exploration remains, but the emphasis shifts from control to adaptation.

There’s also a major tonal contrast. Crusoe views isolation spiritually; the island becomes a place of repentance and a sign of divine intervention. Watney sees isolation scientifically. Problems exist to be solved through chemistry, botany, math, and engineering. Crusoe survives through faith reinforced by work; Watney survives through work that effectively replaces faith.

And yet, both novels are ultimately focused on the same fantasy: that human rationality can bring order to chaos. Both protagonists deal with isolation through routine, measurement, documentation, and labor. Survival becomes a process. Heroism turns bureaucratic. Keep track of supplies. Solve the next problem. Maintain the system. Survive one more day.

Which is probably why both books are strangely comforting despite being about extreme isolation. They turn survival into something orderly and easy to understand. The stranded man becomes a model of humanity boiled down to its basic tools: thought, work, adaptation, persistence.

I'll give you an example. Say you read a fic situated three hundred years in the future. Say the main character listens to Taylor Swift. And said main character is fifteen.

Now imagine a fifteen year-old teenager, today, listening to Bach's Easter Oratorio. (I checked and it was written specifically in 1725) It can be considered as somewhat uncommon. My mom listened to Mozart on loop when she was a teenager and the time gap is lesser than with Bach. Heck, I used to listened to 1940s songs when I was fifteen and it was still strange. My little brother listens to my dad's favorite bands from when he was a teenager and my dad finds that surprising.

What I'm saying is: you don't want to create new singers for a throwaway line, I get it. Really, I do. But don't you think it's a little weird Taylor Swift is still as popular and relevant in three hundred years? I can get behind the "gastronomy and food haven't changed". I can get behind the "actually we found the most efficient architecture so we don't need to change it". I can get behind the "we still study XXIth century literature because it's a classic", even though saying "he enjoyed reading Haruki Murakami" is like saying "yeah my little brother really loves Daniel Defoe". I can get behind the "nothing in society changed except for this One Special Thing" because it's convenient for the plot. I draw the line at music (and also at books because that's actually really weird too).

" I saw the Cloud, though I did not foresee the Storm. "

- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders