The Solitary of Juan Fernandez or the Real Robinson Crusoe: Joseph Xantier Saintine

Joseph Xavier Saintine is an unjustly forgotten French novelist and dramatist, whose real family name was Boniface. Saintine was born in Paris, in 1793. In 1823 he produced a volume of poetry in the manner of the Romanticists, entitled "Poèmes," odes, épitres." In 1836 appeared "Picciola," the story of the comte de Charney, a political prisoner in Piedmont, whose reason was saved by his cult of a tiny flower growing between the paving stones of his prison yard. He produced many other novels, "The Real Robinson Crusoe" being perhaps his masterpiece, having been translated into most European languages. Saintine was also a prolific dramatist, and collaborated in some hundred pieces with Scribe and others, usually under the name of Xavier.