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Abandoned with five children by her foolish husband, a beautiful young Frenchwoman in London decides to live by her beauty. She becomes the mistress of a…
Abandoned with five children by her foolish husband, a beautiful young Frenchwoman in London decides to live by her beauty. She becomes the mistress of a rich jeweller, then of a prince in Paris, and amasses a great fortune; at a masked ball in London, dancing in Turkish dress, she is given the name Roxana. Years later, married and respectable, she is pursued by Susan, one of the daughters she abandoned, and her faithful maid Amy takes a terrible step to protect her secret.
Context and significance
Roxana, published in 1724, was Daniel Defoe's last novel and his darkest, a study of guilt and of a woman who chooses independence over marriage. This edition has both parts. Read Defoe's Moll Flanders and Robinson Crusoe.
About the author
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) was the son of a London butcher, became a merchant, went bankrupt more than once and turned to writing pamphlets. In 1703 he was put in the pillory for a satire on religious intolerance, and he later worked as a secret agent for the government in Scotland.
He was nearly sixty when he published Robinson Crusoe in 1719, and in the next few years he wrote Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year. He wrote hundreds of works in all, and is often called one of the fathers of the English novel.