Roxana Or The Fortunate Mistress

"I liv'd indeed like a Queen; or if you will have me confess, that my condiion had still the Reproach of a Whore, I may say, I was sure, the Queen of Whores' Deserted by her rakish husband, the beautiful Roxana abandons poverty, morality and her five children and embarks on a career of sexual intrigue and fraud in England, France and the Netherlands. Through her beauty and shrewdness, and abetted by her inventive confidante Amy, Roxana becomes the mistress of the great and acquires immense wealth and social status. However, as in all morality tales, when at last her success is no longer a match for her notoriety, Roxana finds herself tangled in the web of her own misdeeds. In Roxana, Defoe's knowledge of eighteenth-century psychology is distilled into a brilliant early example of the romance, combining sexual desire with the struggle for wealth in a complex image of a woman who is as much entrepreneur as courtesan. The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with int