Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 13 September 1884.

Attribution: The article called ‘Music for the Middle-Aged’, CMG, 21 June 1884, included in the Sussex Scrapbooks (28/1, p. 1), is signed ‘Jacob Cavendish’, as is ‘The Tragedy of Crusoe’. RK later maintained that more than one writer used the same pseudonym on the CMG, but since the only other Englishman on the editorial staff of the CMG was the editor, Stephen Wheeler, and since Wheeler is not known ever to have written anything in the way of fiction or verse, it seems safe to assume that a pseudonym known to have been used by RK was exclusively his, unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.

‘Crusoe’ is probably the item RK refers to in a letter of 17 September 1884 as a ‘specimen’ of ‘a set of weekly articles’ that he intends to begin in the CMG in order to liven up the paper (to Edith Macdonald: Letters, i, 76).

Text: Civil and Military Gazette.

Notes: This is, so far as is known, the first piece of prose fiction that RK contributed to the CMG, which he had joined at the end of October or in early November, 1882. He had had opportunities to indulge his inventiveness in a few poems and in a handful of humorous articles (e.g., ‘Music for the Middle- Aged’ in June 1884), but the paper under Stephen Wheeler was not yet open to RK's ‘creative’ work. In September 1884, however, Wheeler had gone off to the Hills on vacation and the CMG was for the time entirely in RK's hands, which may explain the appearance of ‘The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.’ RK himself had been at Dalhousie, in the Hills, while Wheeler remained in Lahore. They had now switched places, and RK, like Crusoe, had just returned to ‘the island’. RK also thought at this time that his transfer from the CMG to its bigger, sister paper, the Pioneer of Allahabad, was imminent, so that any move of his that might offend Wheeler would not matter: he would, he supposed, soon be out of Wheeler's reach.