Roxana, the fortunate mistress, or, A history of the life and vast variety of fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau : afterwards called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany : being the person known by the name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Roxana, the fortunate mistress, or, A history of the life and vast variety of fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau : afterwards called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany : being the person known by the name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II
（The world's classics）
Oxford University Press, 1996
- pbk.
- Other Title
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Roxana, the fortunate mistress
History of the life and vast variety of fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau
- Uniform Title
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Fortunate mistress
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Note
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"Roxana", Defoe's last and darkest novel, is the autobiography of a woman who has traded her virtue, at first for survival, and then for fame and fortune. Its narrator tells the story of her own "wicked" life as the mistress of rich and powerful men. A resourceful adventuress, she is also an unforgiving analyst of her own susceptibilities, who tells us of the price she pays for her successes. Endowed with many seductive skills, she is herself seduced - by money, by dreams of rank, and by the illusion that she can escape her own past. Unlike Defoe's other penitent anti-heroes, however, she fails to triumph over these weaknesses. The novel's drama lies not only in the heroine's "vast variety of fortunes", but in her attempts to understand the sometimes bitter lessons of her life as a "Fortunate Mistress". Defoe's achievement was to invent, in "Roxana", a gripping story-teller as well as a gripping story. Using the rare first edition text, this edition includes an introduction, study notes, textual history and a map, and may be of interest to students of English literature, especially 18th century.
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