The continuous and almost unprecedented popularity of Robinson Crusoe, Part i, has been variously explained. In accounting for the book's superiority to the imitations which it has inspired, several critics have praised Defoe for allowing his island adventurer barely enough in the way of tools and equipment to keep himself alive and gradually to improve his condition. It is often held, too, that Crusoe manifests unusual mechanical ability. But the facts do not support either of these assumptions, and I believe that the reader who makes them has failed to recognize a perennial source of the book's charm.

James Sutherland, Defoe's biographer, commends the author for restricting his hero to “only a few things saved from the wreck,” with which he “proceeds to build up a new life.” In his introduction to the Modern Library edition of Robinson Crusoe, Louis Kronenberger agrees with others who, he says, have pointed out that “Defoe allowed Crusoe just enough in the way of equipment and fodder and tools for him at the outset to stay alive, and in the course of time to be made comfortable.” Paul Dottin remarks that Defoe has simplified his task by allowing the castaway “tout ce qui peut etre utile.”