The Swiss Family Robinson

The following work has for its main purpose to be of use to children and the friends of children. For the first however, it is not all children for which it can pretend to be adapted, but only such as are able to mix some reflection with their reading, as already possess certain general ideas on the subjects of natural history and geography; in a word, such as have acquired that portion of instruction which is given from the age of eight to fourteen years in most of the primary schools in the large towns, and even in the villages.

For the second, I do not by the friends of children particularly understand that class of individuals who are engaged in philosophical researches, theories, and experiments on the subject of education; but such fathers, teachers, and others, who delight to employ their attention on the youthful mind; who observe with pleasure the actions and discourses of children; who reflect naturally and without any preconcerted system upon their faculties, dispositions, and characters; who find themselves prompted to infuse useful knowledge into them through the medium of conversation; and who will not regard with disdain a simple and well intended essay towards their improvement, merely because it pretends to no novelty of theorems, and is not founded upon the basis of a long series of scientifical and metaphysical propositions.

Prefaces are not intended for the perusal of children; but the friends of children will perhaps be gratified to find in this some account of the origin and object of the present work. In such a detail they will perhaps find motives for indulgence, if not for approbation, and will proceed to the work itself with less severity of analysis and criticism.

It is now nearly twenty years since the writer of the following sheets began to throw together the hints of his work in detached parcels. The purpose he had in view was to amuse, to instruct, and to fashion the character of four sons borne to him by an exemplary mother: in doing this, he conceived the idea of faithfully portraying these four children in correspondence with the germs of character he already remarked in them. He made them act and speak, exactly as they were accustomed to act and speak in the ordinary train of their lives; with this difference only, that he often strengthened and made more prominent whatever of excellence or of frailty he found in them, representing them rather such as he might suppose them to become at a period of greater maturity, than such as they were at the moment of writing; entertaining the idea, that by this means he should render their faults the more displeasing to them, and alarm them the more with the consequences that might result, and that he might render sound judgement and integrity more lovely in their eyes. The portrait of the mother was drawn with all that earnest esteem and affection which she inspired in her husband, and which she well deserved. On the one side he was anxious to paint his family just as it was, and on the other he thought that the book so constructed could not be without utility to children of the softer sex; as in delineating his wife he should present to them a model of the power given to the female sex over the happiness of their families, both as wives and mothers. Various motives prevented him from introducing girls in his uninhabited island. The first was, that he had himself no girls, and that introducing them would have spoiled the integrity of his painting: several other motives may easily be conceived.