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
（Oxford world's classics）
Oxford University Press, 1998
New ed
- : pbk
- Other Title
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Roxana
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Note
"This edition is based on the British Museum copy of the first edition of 1724."--P. [xxix]
Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxx]-xxxii)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Roxana (1724), 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.
This edition uses the rare first edition text, with a new introduction, detailed notes, textual history, and a map.
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