The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - published in 1719 - was Defoe's first novel and his best-known work. Loosely based on a true account of a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, it is a tale of one man's fall from grace, and progress to redemption.

Willful and impatient, young Robinson Crusoe disregards the advice of his family and heads for the open sea. His obduracy eventually leaves him stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Caribbean - the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The account of his life, scratched out with rationed indigo ink on a dwindling supply of paper salvaged from the hull of a wrecked ship, speaks eloquently of the tenacity and ingenuity of the human spirit.

Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1660. Although groomed for the ministry, he would eventually join England's growing class of small tradesman. At the age of 59 Defoe turned to writing fiction. Though often snubbed by the more genteel class, his novels were extremely popular with nearly everyone else. Today, many scholars argue that Defoe is the true father of the English novel.