Desert island Autodidactus" inspired Robert Boyle, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on a deserted island, "The Aspiring Naturalist". Ibn al-Nafis' "Theologus Autodidactus" was also eventually translated into English in the early 20th century. Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" about a castaway on a desert island has spawned so many imitations in film, television and radio that its name was used to define a genre, Robinsonade. The novel features Man Friday, Crusoe's personal assistant. It is likely that Defoe took inspiration for Crusoe from a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in
Despair (novel) was his "first serious attempt... to use English for what may loosely termed an artistic purpose" and finished on December 29 later that year. Nabokov sent the manuscript to Hutchinson & Co. in April 1936 and although the company had initial reservations, eventually agreed to publish the book and the translation was checked by a Molly Carpenter-Lee, a student of Nabokov's friend Gleb Struve. The book was a complete flop commercially and Nabokov only earned €40, a minuscule amount, even in the 1930s. The issue was that Hutchinson's only published cheap, "popular" novels, which "Despair" was not and thus, it