The Coral Island are, in his own words, "adventure stories for young folks", and "The Coral Island" is no exception. It is a Robinsonade, a genre of fiction inspired by Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), one of the most popular of its type, and one of the first works of juvenile fiction to feature exclusively juvenile heroes. Susan Maher, professor of English, notes that in comparison to "Robinson Crusoe" such books generally replaced some of the original's romance with a "pedestrian realism", exemplified by works such as "The Coral Island" and Frederick Marryat's 1841 novel "Masterman Ready, or the Wreck of the Pacific".
Despair Island during a nighttime boat ride. Roger Williams named this and the other islands in Narragansett Bay, and a popular Colonial-period song helped children remember their names: <poem>Prudence, Patience, Hope, and Despair And little Hog Island, right over there.</poem> Despair Island Despair Island is a small island in Narragansett Bay in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located between Hope Island and Prudence Island. The island is composed of many outcroppings of rocks used extensively by nesting birds, such as gulls and terns. Despair Island is marked with a buoy because it is hard to see during daylight hours; it is