Robinson Crusoe published in 1719 was Defoe’s first novel and survives as 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. The account of Crusoe’s 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.
