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This study of the afterlife of Robinson Crusoe offers insights into the continued popularity and relevance of Crusoe´s story and how modern conceptions of childhood are shaped by nostalgia and ideas of ´the popular´. Examining many adaptations in a variety of formats, it reconsiders the place Crusoe has occupied in our culture for three centuries.

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List of Illustrations Introduction Performing Crusoe and Becoming Crusoes: the Pedagogical uses of Robinson Crusoe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Crusoe Comes Home: Robinsonades and Children´s Editions of Robinson Crusoe Poaching on Crusoe´s Island: Popular Reading and Chapbook Editions of Robinson Crusoe ´Animal Spirits are Everything!´: Robinson Crusoe Pantomimes and the Child of Nostalgia An Island of Toys: Childhood and Robinson Crusoe Consumer Goods Epilogue Bibliography Index

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´This is a beautifully researched and intricately thought-out work of scholarship, whose apparently modest scope is deceptive, since the book ultimately pushes towards a far-reaching and provocative conclusion: that Robinson Crusoe, by heralding the future ´as modernity´ and evoking the past ´as nostalgia´, performs ´the kind of fundamentally contradictory cultural work into whose service the idea of childhood itself has been called for at least the last two centuries´´ - Louise Joy, University of Cambridge, UK

´O´Malley´s recognition of Robinson Crusoe as an enduring media event will, one hopes, spur other scholars to revisit the history of

this western classic and consider that Crusoe´s legacy may not be built upon the power of Defoe´s prose or narration, but rather on derivatives and adaptations that were frequently revised to reflect the ideas and values of a rapidly evolving society.´ - Jordan Howell, University of Delaware, USA

´Weaving together social history, textual analysis, impressive archival research, and lucid theoretical argument, Children´s Literature, Popular Culture, and Robinson Crusoe is a tour de force of scholarship.´ - Susan Naramore Maher, Children´s Literature Association Quarterly

´O´Malley´s study is interesting, insightful, and enjoyable.´ - The Year´s Work in English Studies

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ANDREW O´MALLEY Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ryerson University, Canada. He is the author of The Making of the Modern Child: Children´s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century. His research and teaching interests include children´s literature and culture, popular culture, and the eighteenth century.

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