Time has not been particularly kind to Johann Gottfried Schnabel's Wunderliche Fata einiger See-Fahrer. Immensely popular when first published and part of the childhood reading of some of the most important figures of German Romanticism, the first volume barely remains in print. Even the work's most enthusiastic fans — and there are not very many! — admit that it is not a literary masterpiece. Within the present argument, Schnabel's work is important precisely because it is neither particularly deep nor extremely original. Schnabel intended his work for popular consumption and he consciously wrote within the already recognizable Robinsonade genre. The Wunderliche Fata distills the elements of the Robinsonade for a mass audience, thus revealing a lot about the establishment of the genre. In addition, Schnabel's introduction contains comments that defend the value of fictional, entertaining works. These comments reflect an important transition in the theory of the novel.

The four volumes of the Wunderliche Fata appeared in 1731, 1732, 1736, and 1743. The first volume contains one of the eighteenth century's most complete Robinsonade episodes, while subsequent volumes describe the island settlement and relate its inhabitants' life stories. Secondary criticism of the text has tended to focus on the influence of German pietism or Enlightenment rationalism on the author. The general consensus is that life on the utopian island, the Insel Felsenburg, combines an Enlightenment emphasis on order and reason with the overt piety and sentimentality characteristic of German pietism.