What is it about islands that is so alluring, and why do so many people find these self-contained worlds irresistible? Utopia and Atlantis were islands, and islands have captured the imaginations of writers and artists for centuries. In 1719, Daniel Defoe published his tale of a castaway on a desert island, Robinson Crusoe, one of the first great novels in the history of English literature and an instant bestseller. Defoe’s tale combined the real and the imagined into a compelling creative landscape, establishing a whole literary genre and unleashing the power of islands in storytelling