A young man goes to sea against his father's advice, survives storms, slavery and a shipwreck, and finds himself alone on an island where the only proof another human exists is a single footprint. Defoe was fifty-nine when he published it, had been pilloried and imprisoned for his pamphlets, and wrote it as a true account by the man himself - most of his first readers believed it.

A young man goes to sea against his father's advice, survives storms, slavery and a shipwreck, and finds himself alone on an island where the only proof another human exists is a single footprint. Defoe was fifty-nine when he published it, had been pilloried and imprisoned for his pamphlets, and wrote it as a true account by the man himself - most of his first readers believed it.