Readers believed Crusoe's story was true. In the Preface, Defoe noted that the book was "a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it."
W. T. Taylor printed 1,500 copies of Robinson Crusoe. So popular was the new book that it was reprinted a month later, again in June, and twice more by the end of the year. In October the story was serialized in The Original London Post for sixty-five weeks, an astonishing run.
Defoe never named Selkirk as the model for his hero. But in a new edition of his novel he wrote:
There is a man alive, and well known too, the actions of whose life are [my] subject, and to whom all or most part of the story alludes: this may be depended upon for the truth, and to this I set my name.
Defoe's notes for his story, still preserved in the Guildhall Library in London, read in part: "Goats plenty. Fish: abundance, split and salt.... The fat of young seals good as olive oil."
There is also mention of a visit with a Captain Thomas Bowry of the East India Company, a shipping firm. Bowry showed Defoe maps of Juan Fernández.
Ten years after it was published, Defoe's story appeared in French, and by 1760 in German, Dutch, and Russian. Translations appear today in nearly all the world's languages.
After the success of the first Crusoe story, Defoe wrote two more: Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe in 1719 and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe the next year. These books, however, never attracted readers of the original story and have been largely forgotten.
In his lifetime, Defoe turned out an awesome amount of writing, possibly as many as 566 separate works—novels, long poems, political pamphlets, articles for 27 newspapers and magazines, and between 250 and 300 books. Besides Crusoe, his Moll Flanders (1722) remains in print today.
Despite his outpouring of words, Defoe never seemed to earn enough money to support his wife and seven children in their big house in Stoke Newington. In April 1731 he was hiding from people he owed money to in a shabby rooming house in Ropemaker's Alley in London. There he died, some twelve years after his famous novel first appeared.
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In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe created one of the most enduring characters in all fiction.
Did Selkirk ever read the story? Possibly. In April 1719, when the novel appeared, he was on leave from H.M.S. Enterprise and in London. On daily walks about the city he sometimes visited bookstores. We can only wonder if he picked up the book, paged through it, and recalled once more the island paradise he had known.
At the end of his famous story, Defoe arranged for Crusoe to return to the island on which he had lived for twenty-eight years. But we know that was only fiction. Alexander Selkirk, the real-life Robinson Crusoe, never found his island home again.