private Man’s Adventures — if the title offered an historical account competing with the best romances the preface goes one step further with the specification dubious histories afforded: The account will offer private rather than public subject matter. It will be the more doubtful and – with private history being prone to personal (ab-)use of the press – the less legitimate production yet on the same hand most carefully designed to please on poetical grounds even if it should remain unverified, so the very rash specification which puts Robinson Crusoe into → the pattern under which fiction and dubious histories sold.