First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is a book that marks the beginning of realistic fiction writing in English. Its simple, linear narrative style and the semblance of being a true account and autobiographical in nature led to its great popularity when it first came out. Its original title The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York: Mariner, Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone in an Uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Ooronoque, Having Been Cast Ashore By Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished But Himself; With an Account How He Was At Last Strangely Deliver'd By Pyrates pretty much sums up the entire plot! Daniel Defoe the author is said to have been greatly inspired by the newspaper and journal accounts he had read about the explorer Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish seaman who was marooned on a Pacific Island. Other scholars identify the root of the story in various other sources, but whatever its origin, Robinson Crusoe became a runaway best seller and continues to remain one of the most popular and widely read adventure stories in English.