Roxana The Fortunate Mistress n/e (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Defoe, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199536740 ISBN 13: 9780199536740

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

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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About this title

About the Author

John Mullan is Lecturer in English at University College, London.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199536740
• ISBN 13: 9780199536740
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Mullan John