The life and adventures of Roxana, the fortunate mistress, or, Most unhappy wife ... : adorned with a curious print of Roxana in her Turkish dress.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731, author.

Contributor:

Sympson, C., active 1753-1790, printer.

Standardized Title:

Fortunate mistress

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Europe--18th century--Fiction--Early works to 1800.

Women.

Mistresses--Fiction--Early works to 1800.

Mistresses.

Europe--Social conditions--18th century--Fiction--Early works to 1800.

Europe.

Physical Description:

356 pages, [1] leaf of plates : 1 illustration ; 18 cm (4to)

Other Title:

Most unhappy wife

Fingerprint:

n-On ayhe sse, Sabe (3) 1774 (Q)

Place of Publication:

London : Printed by C. Sympson, in Stonecutter-Street, Fleet-Market, [1774]

Contents:

(from title leaf) Containing, I. An account of her birth in France, and coming to England

II. Her marriage in London with a brewer, who ran out his estate, and left her in a destitute condition with five children

III. Her cohabiting with her landlord, their journey to Paris, where her gallant was robbed, and murdered

IV. Her being fell in love with by the Prince of - by whom she had a son; her going with the Prince to the Palace of Mendon, where she saw her husband, who had entered in the Gens d'Arms Guard. The Prince leaving her, &c.

V. The dealings she had with a Dutch merchant and a Jew, the latter of whom wanted to defraud her of a great parcel of her jewels, her return, in a dangerous storm to England; her going afterwards to Rotterdam, where she sees the Dutch merchant, to whom she soon after became a bedfellow

VI. Her return to England again, living a great lady, where she had the name of Roxana. Her marriage with the Dutch merchant in London, who was naturalized, and created a Baronet; the miseries she and her maid Amy fell afterwards into.

Notes:

Undated variant of the abridged edition issued by Sympson in 1774 (ESTC N498397). See Jarndyce.

Imprint date from Jarndyce.

Signatures: A-2X⁴ 2Y².

Engraved frontispiece (plate). "The frontispiece is an adaptation of a print dated c.1765 that is recorded in the Folger Shakespeare Library, entitled 'Roxana in her Turkish Habit', and which formed the frontispiece to the 1765 abridgement of Defoe’s work, published by S. Crowder."--Jarndyce.

Type ornament factotum and head-pieces.

Local Notes:

Singer-Mendenhall copy purchased for the Penn Libraries in 2021 from Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers.

Singer-Mendenhall copy bound in full contemporary calf; 5 raised bands on spine; gold-ruled spine panels.

Singer-Mendenhall copy: "staining to pp. 29-48, repair to gutter margin on verso of preface just touching a few letters at extreme right hand edge, repair at head & verso of first page of text not affecting letters."--Bookseller's description.

Cited in:

English short title catalogue N511847

Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers. Catalogue CCLI (Autumn 2021), 160

OCLC:

1350542604