Roxana : The Fortunate Mistress Paperback / softback
by Daniel Defoe
Edited by John (Lecturer in English, Lecturer in English, University College, London) Mullan
Part of the Oxford World's Classics series
Paperback / softback
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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Information
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Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:400 pages, 2 halftones, 1 map
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:10/07/2008
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199536740
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Information
-
Less than 10 available - usually despatched within 24 hours
- Format:Paperback / softback
- Pages:400 pages, 2 halftones, 1 map
- Publisher:Oxford University Press
- Publication Date:10/07/2008
- Category:
- ISBN:9780199536740
