Description

Small 8°, [1] engraved frontispiece, 429 pp. Text, as always mistake with numeration with lacking pp. 9-10, later marbled paper cover with green calf spine and edges, gilt embossed letter D on the cover, gilt raised bands and gilt title on red label on the spine, purple fore-edge (Very Good, frontispiece and title page mounted on old paper, tiny folds and tears in margins of end papers).

This is a first edition of Nil Hammelmanns’s travels, printed in Erfurt in 1747. The frontispiece shows four maps of imaginary island.

Although the title mentions the book was allegedly translated from Dutch, is this probably an original German text. The second edition of the work was printed in the same year by the same publisher, and was followed by sequences in the following years.

Robinsonade

The story of Robinson Crusoe was based on a real life experience by a sailor Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned on Juan Fernández Island (today Robinson Crusoe Island ) for over four years, between 1704-1709. Upon his return a book based on his life was published with a title Fame of having lived four Years and four Months alone on the Island of Juan Fernandez, which inspired Daniel Defoe (circa 1660-1731) to write The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.

This first edition of Robinson Crusoe was supposed to be only an unimportant entertaining book. It was Defoe’s 412^th publication and he wrote it, because he needed money for his daughter’s wedding. It was published anonymously on April 25, 1719, and war republished in on May 9, June 4, August 7 etc without definitive manuscript.

The book was a major success and soon many different variations of text with various names and stories appeared in different languages. The stories varied from entertaining and educational to moralising.

The word Robinsonade was first invented by German writer Johann Gottfried Schnabel in the Preface of his 1731 work Die Insel Felsenburg (The Island Stronghold).

References: Hayn/G. III, 56f. u. V, 388; Ullrich, p. 135-136, no. 1; Diana Souhami, Selkirk’s Island, 2002.