Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress

by Daniel Defoe

Overview

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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162409212
Publisher:	Interzone Press
Publication date:	09/13/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) was an English author best known for his adventure novel, Robinson Crusoe, that he wrote later in life. A prolific writer, Defoe authored several books on economics, history, biography and crime. He pursued a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, secret agent and political pamphleteer, but is best remembered for his fiction. Daniel Defoe's other widely read books include Roxana, Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year. The name of the Robinson Crusoe Island, located in the South Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile, was inspired by Defoe's famous story.