The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a fictional autobiography of the title, a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story is widely perceived to have been influenced by the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on the Pacific island. It is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre. Daniel Foe was an English trader, writer, journalist and spy. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularize the form in Britain. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals.