Book description
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. A prolific
and versatile writer, Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) produced some 500 books
on a wide variety of topics, including politics, geography, crime,
religion, economics, marriage, psychology and superstition. He delighted
in role-playing and disguise, a skill he used to great effect as a
secret agent, and in his writing he often adopted a pseudonym or another
personality for rhetorical impact. He turned to fiction relatively late
in life and in 1719 published his great imaginative work, Robinson
Crusoe. This was followed in 1722 by Moll Flanders and A Journal of the
Plague Year, and in 1724 by his last novel, Roxana. Defoe had a great
influence on the development of the English novel and many consider him
to be the first true novelist.
