[T]he effect of the bi-centenary [of Robinson Crusoe] is to make us marvel that

Robinson Crusoe, the perennial and immortal, should have been in existence so
short a time as that. The book resembles one of the anonymous productions of
the race rather than the effort of a single mind[.] (Virginia Woolf)
Not one person in ten, nay, not one person in five hundred, has, during the
perusal of Robinson Crusoe, the most remote conception that any particle of
genius, or even of common talent, has been employed in its creation! Men do not
look on it in the light of a literary performance. Defoe has none of their thoughts
Robinson all. (Edgar Allan Poe)
Like Odysseus embarked for Ithaca, like Quixote mounted on Rocinante,
Robinson Crusoe with his parrot and umbrella has become a figure in the
collective unconscious of the West, transcending the book whichin its multitude
of editions, translations, and adaptationscelebrates his adventures. Having
pretended to belong to history, he finds himself in the sphere of myth. (J. M.
Coetzee)