![]() ![]() ![]() This longevity, surely, is due at least in part to our fascination with the sea itself, and in particular to its hold on the imagination of authors. Among readers, clearly, there is an abiding appetite for tales of the sea, but that alone can hardly account for a continuity of tradition that has few if any equals among literary genres. Yet it is as a "mariner" that he is introduced in that novel's full title, and he undertakes not one but two ill-fated voyages before the one that leads him to his desert island.įrom Defoe the lineage of maritime fiction can be traced almost without interruption to the end of the 20th century – the last complete novel in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series appeared in 1999 – though its apotheosis, many would argue, was reached in 1851, with the publication of Moby-Dick. The eponymous hero of Robinson Crusoe, widely regarded as the first novel in English, is all but synonymous with the figure of the island castaway. For as long as there have been novels there have been novels of the sea. ![]()
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