Crusoe by Katherine Frank

Author:Katherine Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Title page of the first edition of Knox’s

An Historical Relation of Ceylon, 1681

Meanwhile, Knox’s Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon was officially published. On Thursday 1 September the London Gazette ran an advertisement for:

An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, in the East-Indies: together with an Account of the detaining in Captivity the Author, and divers other Englishmen now living there, and of the Authors Miraculous Escape. Illustrated with fifteen large Figures, and a Map of the Island. By Robert Knox, a Captive there near twenty years. Sold by Richard Chiswell, Printer to the Royal Society, at the Rose and Crown in St Paul’s Church yard. (Book priced at 10 shillings in ordinary binding)

Even in ‘ordinary’, plain, hard covers it was an impressive volume: a large folio of nearly two hundred pages, including the East India Company’s and Christopher Wren’s imprimaturs, Hooke’s six-page preface, a nine-page table of contents, a page of errata and, at the end of the book, a two-page list of other books published by Richard Chiswell. Many of the early volumes had been purchased by subscription and those readers who wanted more elaborate editions than the plain, ten-shilling one, could order vellum or calf binding with gilt lettering and ornate tooling.64 The impressive, folio-sized copper-plate illustrations were placed at appropriate points in the text while the large, fold-out engraved map of Ceylon was inserted at the end.

Thus, in early September 1681, Robert Knox’s careers as an author and an East India Company captain were launched simultaneously. On board the Tonqueen Merchant, he waited in the Downs for three weeks for the other convoy ships to arrive and then for the weather and wind to allow them to depart. Finally, on 21 September, a bright, sunny day with a good wind, the Tonqueen Merchant and the five other ships set sail.

A special copy of Knox’s Historical Relation sailed with him. As he explained many years later to John Strype, ‘the first voiage I went to sea after my booke of Ceylon was printed, Mr Chiswell gave me a booke interleaved with … blanke leafe [leaves or folio sheets] & desired me to make additions there on which I did’.65 Chiswell had promised to publish a new, expanded edition upon Knox’s return, and though Knox had no instructions to call at Ceylon on this voyage – nor any intention of doing so – he would have time during his days at sea to go over his book and revise and expand it. He had a great deal more to add that he hadn’t included in the first edition because of the pressure he’d been under to complete the book before he departed. No doubt additional material would also come to mind in the weeks and months ahead.

When Knox sailed from the Downs in September 1681, just a little more than a year had passed since his arrival back in England from his ‘long and desolate captivity’ on Ceylon. Twelve months earlier he had been penniless, homeless and without friends.

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