The Fortunate Mistress or a History of the Life of Mademoiselle de Beleau, Known by the name of the Lady Roxana (1724)

by Daniel Defoe

Overview

According to Wikipedia: "Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress is a 1724 novel by Daniel Defoe. The full title of the novel is 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. The novel concerns the story of an unnamed "fallen woman", the second time Defoe created such a character (the first was a similar female character in Moll Flanders). In Roxana, a woman who takes on various pseudonyms, including "Roxana," describes her fall from wealth thanks to abandonment by a "fool" of a husband and movement into prostitution upon his abandonment. Roxana moves up and down through the social spectrum several times, by contracting an ersatz marriage to a jeweler, secretly courting a prince, being offered marriage by a Dutch merchant, and is finally able to afford her own freedom by accumulating wealth from these men."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455397334
Publisher:	Seltzer Books
Publication date:	12/01/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	883 KB

About the Author

London-born Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) pursued a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, secret agent, and political pamphleteer. He wrote books on economics, history, biography, and crime. But he is best remembered for his fiction, which he began to write late in his life and which includes the novels Moll Flanders, Roxana, and the celebrated Robinson Crusoe.