If ever a book could be considered imperishable, it is Robinson Crusoe. Defoe's masterpiece has maintained, generation after generation, its special place among the world's classics. As an adventure story, as a parable of man's indomitable spirit and resourcefulness, it is as alive and exciting as it was when first published in 1719. It comes into the Modern Library with A Journal of the Plague Year, that feat of the imagination which reads as if it were a documented history. Both are brilliantly introduced by America's foremost authority on eighteenth-century England, Louis Kronenberger.
