“Crusoe explores the intertwined lives of two real men: Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book and its hero, the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe.”
It’s extraordinary that no comprehensive biography of Robert Knox has been written before now. After all, Knox’s An Historical Relation of Ceylon (1681) was, through translation, a European best-seller. It contained the author’s notable account of his capture, confinement in the Kandyan kingdom, and eventual escape, at a time when such adventures were fashionable among the reading public. The book also provided the British with the first detailed account of their future colony, its people, and their unfamiliar way of life. Indeed, it has proved to be an invaluable source of information and is probably the most quoted book concerning the country.
Furthermore, it caused loyal friendship and fruitful scientific collaboration between Knox and the Secretary of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke – who edited the manuscript - which has remained inadequately documented by the scientist’s biographers. (When Hooke lay dying, it was Knox, and only Knox, who he summoned to his bedside.) It influenced several authors, particularly Daniel Defoe, who appears to have based the character of Robinson Crusoe on Knox, although this has been brushed aside by the novelist’s biographers. And it introduced many words of Sri Lankan origin or association to the English language, such as Buddha, rattan, and pooja, as I documented in Knox’s Words (2004).
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| Author Katherine Frank at the Knox memorial stone, erected in 1908 by John Penry Lewis, at Lagendenny. John Loveland, who is believed by Charles Allen to be Knox's father, is mentioned. |
Then there’s Knox’s crusty, pious, misogynistic character, his curious nautical career after the publication of the book in which he transported slaves and mistreated his crew enough for them to seize his ship. It was on such voyages that Knox acquired specimens of flora, artefacts, tools and weaponry for Hooke. For instance, Knox, who had experienced the pharmaceutical use of bhang in Ceylon, brought perhaps the first cannabis seeds and leaves to London in 1689. Hooke not only tried to grow some plants, but gave a revolutionary lecture to members of the Royal Society (see my article “Confessions of British Bhang-eating,” Himal Southasian, October–November 2010), in which he praised the drug’s “efficacies”.
There have been various accounts of Knox’s life and the history of his book, but nothing comprehensive enough. The best is the first - the fastidious researcher Donald Ferguson’s Captain Robert Knox: the twenty years captive in Ceylon, and author of “An Historical Relation of Ceylon, in the East Indies” (London, 1681). Contributions towards a biography. (1896-97). But this was incomplete as it was written prior to the discovery of the manuscript of Knox’s autobiography in 1900 and the identification of Knox’s second edition of the book in 1925.
James Ryan was the first to publish the autobiography in An Historical Relation of CEYLON together with somewhat concerning Severall Remarkeable passages of my life that hath hapned since my Deliverance out of my Captivity. By Robert Knox, a Captive there near Twenty Years (1911). However, Ryan not only squandered the opportunity to make an analytical contribution to the subject but also made several editorial errors.
The most recent is JHO Paulusz’ invaluable compilation – but definitely an edition for specialists - of the second edition and autobiography as well as a fragmented biography, titled An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon. Revised, and Brought to the Verge of Publication as the Second Edition of Robert Knox. Together with his Autobiography and All the New Chapters, Paragraphs, Marginal Notes added by the Author in the Two Interleaved Copies of the Original Text of 1681(1989).
In addition, there have been notable references to Knox in a spectrum of publications, among them Herbert White’s “Notes on Knox’s ‘Ceylon’ in its Literary Aspect” (1893), Arthur Secord’s “Studies in the Narrative Method of Defoe” (1924), EFC Ludowyk’s “Robert Knox and Robinson Crusoe” (1952), Ian Goonetileke’s “Robert Knox in the Kandyan Kingdom 1660-1679, A Bio-Bibliographical Commentary” (1975) and its “Addendum” (1998) and Edmund Ronald Leach’s “What Happened to An Historical Relation . . . on the way to the printers?” (1989).
One of the most recent is contained in The Buddha and the Sahibs (2002), the story of the British soldiers, administrators and adventurers who reintroduced Buddhism to the subcontinent. However, the author, Charles Allen – a participant at the forthcoming Galle Literary Festival - made an unfortunate mistake in an otherwise excellent book regarding Knox’s father. He, of course, was also called Robert and was the captain of the frigate Ann. Yet Allen, for some unfathomable reason, asserts that Knox’s father was John Loveland, the vessel’s merchant.
Fortunately, 2011 will see the publication of the most far-reaching biography of Knox to date - albeit juxtaposed with a biography of Defoe - in an exploration of Knox’s contribution to Crusoe’s character. Titled Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth it is written not by a Sri Lankan or one of the legion of British biographers - as might be expected - but, refreshingly, by an American, Katherine Frank, (although she resides in England), who to date has exclusively crafted biographies of pioneering women.
That Knox attracted Frank despite his gender is not surprising considering her penchant for remarkable travellers. Her first biography concerned Mary Kingsley, a typical Victorian who later travelled to some inhospitable regions of Africa. She studied the reclusive Fang tribe, climbed Mount Cameroon and explored the Ogowe River. Of A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley (1986) Elizabeth Longford wrote: “Katherine Frank is the ideal biographer for this challenging subject.”
A comparable biography concerned Lucie Duff-Gordon, a writer and social commentator who led a bohemian life in London. In 1862, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and emigrated to Africa on medical advice, eventually settling in Egypt. Frank relates the transformation that Duff-Gordon underwent as she discarded Victorian England, shunned the English community in Cairo and immersed herself in Egyptian life. Of Lucie Duff Gordon: A Passage to Egypt (1994) Annette Kobak wrote in The New York Times: “Katherine Frank orchestrates her account with depth and subtlety…this biography stands as a masterpiece in its own right.”
Frank has also written A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Brontë (1990), in which the novelist’s life is described as being “troubled, solitary, austere”. Moreover, Frank suggests Brontë was anorexic, which contributed to her wild imagination and shaped her writing. Lastly, there’s Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi (2002), in which Frank provides a sympathetic but unsparing portrait of a flawed leader lumbered with a complex personal and political legacy.
In early 2007 I was contacted by Frank who informed me she had been commissioned to write a biography of Daniel Defoe, and that due to the possible Crusoe connection with Knox had purchased Knox’s Words. She wanted to research Knox as thoroughly as possible and requested my assistance. I, in turn, asked researcher extraordinaire Ismeth Raheem to join me in what turned out to be a two-year search. Frank visited Sri Lanka, checked out Koddiyar Bay, Knox’s landing place, and the villages in which he dwelt around Kandy, but due to the security situation in 2008 was unable to achieve a treasured goal – to retrace Knox’s escape route to Mannar.
It soon became clear that Frank was going to tell a different story to those of the slew of Defoe biographers that mostly disregard Knox (see my “Was Robert Knox the Real Robinson Crusoe?” The Sunday Times, January 31, 2010). There’s an instance in which Knox is not disregarded but maligned: Paula R. Backscheider in Daniel Defoe: His Life (1989) dismisses Knox as an “inferior writer”. Even a specific book on the subject, Tim Severin’s Seeking Robinson Crusoe (2002), ignores Knox. When I suggested to Severin at the 2008 Galle Literary Festival that Knox was a possible source for Crusoe’s character he merely laughed. He believes the source was a surgeon, Henry Pitman, who wrote a short book, A Relation of the Great Suffering and the Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman, (1689) about his escape from a Caribbean penal colony and being shipwrecked and marooned for three months on an uninhabited island, Salt Tortuga, off Venezuela.
Another possible source is examined by Diana Souhami – who like Severin overlooks Knox - in Selkirk’s Island (2001). Alexander Selkirk was the Sailing Master of the Cinque Ports, sent to plunder Spanish ships and ports along the coast of South America in 1703. Selkirk had a difference of opinion with his captain and was put ashore on the uninhabited Juan Fernandez Islands off Chile, where he barely survived for four years before being rescued by Captain Woodes Rogers. Selkirk’s account was published by Rogers’ in his Cruising Voyage Round the World (1712). John Masefield laments in A Mainsail Haul (1913): “It is sad that the comparatively colourless Selkirk should have robbed him [Knox] of much credit properly his.”
In a review of Souhami’s biography (Sunday Observer, December 22, 2002), I remarked, “There remains to be written a definitive study of the influence of Knox on the character of Robinson Crusoe. When it is written - as I’m sure it will – I trust the author will remember to send Diana Souhami a copy”. It’s satisfying to know the definitive study has been completed. While I don’t expect Frank to send a copy of Crusoe to Souhami, I hope the Defoe biographers who dismiss Knox read this unorthodox book.
Frank once remarked to me: “Is Knox [in relation to Crusoe] really so forgotten?” Mysteriously, he is.
Yet Ernest A Baker concludes in The History of the English Novel (1929): “Knox might well have been the author of the Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe.” Secord remarks: “So similar in tone are the two works that many passages could be transferred bodily from one to the other without noticeable effect upon them.” And SD Saparamadu, editor, An Historical Relation of Ceylon (1958), notes: “If you peer into the features of Robinson Crusoe you will see something of the man who was not the lonely inhabitant of a desert island, but who has lived in an alien land among strangers, supported by the strength of his resolution to resist acceptance of his fate.”
If you are thinking of rushing to a bookshop to buy a copy of Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth, desist as it will not be published by Bodley Head until June 23. This piece is to herald what might well be the most significant biography concerning Sri Lanka of 2011 and to whet the appetite of those who find Knox of interest.
The book can now be ordered online at Amazon.com at a discounted price. Even if you just check out the web page without ordering you’ll find the cover, which features the map of the island from An Historical Relation, with an illustration of Crusoe – the frontispiece to the 1719 first edition - astride the ‘o’ of the “Crusoe” of the title, and in the bottom left-hand corner a superbly executed patch of banana plants. In addition, there’s the following “product description”:
“January, 1719. A man sits at a table, writing. Nearly sixty, Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout and ‘the stone’, burdened with a large family and debts, mired in political controversy and legal threats. But for the moment he is preoccupied by a younger man on a barren shore - Robinson Crusoe.
“Several miles south another old man, Robert Knox, sits bent over a heavy volume - the only book he has written, published nearly forty years before. The large folio is now worn and tattered, crammed with extra pages covered in notes and emendations. “A leaner copy of Knox’s book is also on the shelf in Defoe’s library, perhaps even open on the table as he writes.
“If Defoe had died in 1718, the year before he wrote Robinson Crusoe, few of us would have heard of him. He is principally remembered for this book and its hero. They have a life of their own: since it was published, Crusoe has been abridged, imitated, parodied, dramatized, turned into opera, pantomime, comic books and cartoons, made into a string of films, adapted for reality television and translated into every written language.
“Where did Crusoe come from? And what is the secret of his endurance? Crusoe explores the intertwined lives of two real men: Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction. It is the biography of a book and its hero, the story of Defoe, the man who wrote Robinson Crusoe, and of Robert Knox, the man who was Crusoe.” |
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