Alexander Selkirk - in Other Literary Works

In Other Literary Works

• William Cowper's "The Solitude Of Alexander Selkirk" is about the feelings of Selkirk as he lived all alone on the island. This poem gave rise to the common phrase monarch of all I survey via the verse:

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

• Charles Dickens used Selkirk as a simile in Chapter Two of The Pickwick Papers: "Colonel Builder and Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff-boxes, and looked very much like a pair of Alexander Selkirks—'Monarchs of all they surveyed.'" This probably refers to William Cowper's poem.

• In his poem "Inniskeen Road: July Evening", the poet Patrick Kavanagh likens his loneliness on the road to that of Selkirk:

Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight
Of being king and government and nation.
A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king
Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

• In "Etiquette", one of W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballads, Selkirk is used as a model for the English castaways:

These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast,
Upon a desert island were eventually cast.
They hunted for their meals, as Alexander Selkirk used,
But they couldn’t chat together—they had not been introduced.

• Selkirk is mentioned in Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum. During his stay on the Juan Fernández Islands, Slocum runs across a marker commemorating Selkirk’s stay.

• In Allan Cole and Chris Bunch's Sten science fiction series, Book Two, The Wolf Worlds, the Scottish character Alex bemoans their predicament after crash landing: "'A slackit way f'r a mon,' Alex mourned to himself. 'Ah dinnae ken Ah'd ever be Alex Selkirk.'"