The Great Books Society of Denver

Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is considered by many to be the first novel written in English. (There are a few earlier candidates, but they all seem to come with asterisks. For instance, John Bunyan's 1678 work "The Pilgrim's Progress," while clearly a book-length narrative, is intended to be an allegory, not a description of events that could have befallen a real person.)

The novel's eponymous hero, marooned on a remote tropical island that he at first believes to be deserted, eventually encounters cannibals, mutineers, and other colorful characters in the course of his adventures.

On the 300th anniversary of the book's publication, critic Michael Dirda of the Washington Post wrote, "A classic is a book that generations have found worth returning to and arguing with. Vividly written, replete with paradoxes and troubling cultural attitudes, revealing a deep strain of supernaturalism beneath its realist surface, “Robinson Crusoe” is just such a classic and far more than a simple adventure story for kids."

Willa Cather's 1918 novel My Ántonia tells the story of two young people on the Nebraska frontier in the late 1800s: Ántonia Shimerda, the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants; and Jim Burden, an orphaned boy from Virginia. The story, told from Jim's viewpoint in the first person, recounts the development of a lifelong friendship between the two young people and describes both the beauty and hardships of pioneer life.

My Ántonia has been widely praised for the beauty of its prose and is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Many have described it as a book worth reading over and over.