National Geographic:

Real-life buccaneer survival narratives were a major literary genre when Daniel Defoe published his hit novel Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Defoe was influenced by these narratives, and his resulting novel about a shipwrecked Englishman both mirrored and transformed the genre. In its first year, the novel went through several printings to meet public demand.

After Defoe’s death in 1731, some readers claimed the novel was inspired by Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish buccaneer who’d spent four and a half years on an island by himself. Today, many writers claim a connection between Selkirk and Crusoe.

But the idea that there’s a single, real Crusoe is a “false premise,” says Andrew Lambert, a naval history professor at King’s College London and author of Crusoe’s Island. That’s because Crusoe’s story is “a complex compound of all the other buccaneer survival stories.”

Like many of you, I read and was enamored of the novel and movie as a kid. I’d heard of Selkirk’s connection but didn’t realize it was mostly false.