Roxana: Or, the Fortunate Mistress

by Daniel Defoe (Author), Melissa M . Mowry (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $23.60

  Includes material on whore biography, court culture, poverty, and marriage, as well as Defoe's alternative endings to the novel.

• Used

  Paperback
  1981

  $3.59

• New

  Paperback
  1982

  $14.96

  Beautiful, proud Roxana is terrified of being poor. When her foolish husband leaves her penniless with five children, she must choose between being a virtuous beggar or a rich whore. Embarking on a career as a courtesan and kept woman, the glamour of her new existence soon becomes too enticing and Roxana passes from man to man in order to maintain her lavish society parties, luxurious clothes and amassed wealth. But this life comes at a cost, and she is fatally torn between the sinful prosperity she has become used to and the respectability she craves. A vivid satire on a dissolute society, Roxana (1724) is a devastating and psychologically acute evocation of the ways in which vanity and ambition can corrupt the human soul.