The Fortunate Mistress:
[DEFOE, Daniel]
London: printed for T. Warner; W. Meadows; W. Pepper; S. Harding; and T. Edlin. 1724.
Description:
First edition. 8vo, (viii), pp.407, engraved frontispiece of "The famous Roxana". Early nineteenth-century calf, covers with a blind-tooled border, spine decorated in gilt and blind, chestnut brown endpapers, edges lightly rubbed, short hairline crack at top of one joint. A little foxed and browned throughout but otherwise a very good copy of the rare (only three appearing at auction in the last fifty years) first edition of Defoe's last novel, published anonymously and only attributed to him in 1775.
The plot of The Fortunate Mistress is of baroque complexity, purporting to be the autobiography of Madamoiselle de Beleau who rises and falls (the Vast Variety of Fortunes of the subtitle) numerous times before dying in prison, a penitent pauper.
Often referred to now as a proto-feminist novel, The Fortunate Mistress serves as a pendent to Moll Flanders and the two novels have been described (by ODNB) as offering "two of the strongest and most important women characters in the history of literature". It is thought that Defoe refused to put his name to the novel in order to avoid scandal. And it is certainly true that the frank dealing with themes of prostitution, promiscuity, shame, guilt,self-loathing and failed family relations were, and still are to an extent, strong meat. But Defoe is sympathetic to his heroine and critical of the social and sexual mores of his age, creating in this strange, wild novel, "an important milestone, one that invited the reader not to judge the heroine for being a prostitute, but to accept that her circumstances gave her no alternative." (M. Rendell, Sex and Sexuality in Georgian Britain)
Description:
First edition. 8vo, (viii), pp.407, engraved frontispiece of "The famous Roxana". Early nineteenth-century calf, covers with a blind-tooled border, spine decorated in gilt and blind, chestnut brown endpapers, edges lightly rubbed, short hairline crack at top of one joint. A little foxed and browned throughout but otherwise a very good copy of the rare (only three appearing at auction in the last fifty years) first edition of Defoe's last novel, published anonymously and only attributed to him in 1775.
The plot of The Fortunate Mistress is of baroque complexity, purporting to be the autobiography of Madamoiselle de Beleau who rises and falls (the Vast Variety of Fortunes of the subtitle) numerous times before dying in prison, a penitent pauper.
Often referred to now as a proto-feminist novel, The Fortunate Mistress serves as a pendent to Moll Flanders and the two novels have been described (by ODNB) as offering "two of the strongest and most important women characters in the history of literature". It is thought that Defoe refused to put his name to the novel in order to avoid scandal. And it is certainly true that the frank dealing with themes of prostitution, promiscuity, shame, guilt,self-loathing and failed family relations were, and still are to an extent, strong meat. But Defoe is sympathetic to his heroine and critical of the social and sexual mores of his age, creating in this strange, wild novel, "an important milestone, one that invited the reader not to judge the heroine for being a prostitute, but to accept that her circumstances gave her no alternative." (M. Rendell, Sex and Sexuality in Georgian Britain)