Roxana Read Online
1660 |
Born in London, son of James Foe, a tallow-chandler. |
1662 |
The Act of Uniformity. The Foe family left the Church of England to become Presbyterian dissenters. |
1665–6 |
The Plague and the Great Fire of London. |
c. 1671–9 |
Attended the Rev. James Fisher’s school at Dorking, Surrey, and then the Rev. Charles Morton’s dissenting academy at Newington Green (north of London) to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry. |
c. 1682 |
Decided not to become a Presbyterian minister. |
c. 1683 |
Became a hosiery merchant in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange. |
1684 |
Married Mary Tuffley; received a dowry of £3,700. |
1685 |
Fought (briefly) in the Duke of Mon-mouth’s Rebellion. |
1685–92 |
Well-established as a merchant dealing in hosiery, wine, tobacco, and other goods; travelled widely in England and on the Continent (probably in France, Holland, Spain, and Italy). |
1688 |
Published his first extant political tract (against James II); supported the ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1688; and joined the forces of William of Orange en route to London. |
1692 |
First bankruptcy, for £17,000 |
1695 |
Began to call himself De Foe. |
1697–1701 |
Agent for William III in England and Scotland. |
1701 |
Published his first important work, a best-selling poem, The True-Born Englishman. |
1702 |
The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a satire on High-Church extremism. |
1703 |
Arrested for The Shortest Way; committed to Newgate and made to stand in the pillory. Consequent failure of his brick and tile factory. Released through the intervention of Robert Harley, the moderate Tory minister. |
1703–14 |
Served as secret agent and political journalist for Harley and other ministers; travelled in England and Scotland, actively promoting the union of the two countries. |
1703–13 |
Wrote The Review, a pro-government newspaper appearing as often as three times a week. |
1707 |
The Union of England and Scotland. |
1713–14 |
Arrested several times for debt and for political writings, but released on each occasion through government influence. |
1714 |
Accession of George I; fall of Harley. Defoe served Whig ministries until 1730. |
1715 |
The Family Instructor, the first of Defoe’s conduct books. |
1719 |
Robinson Crusoe. |
1720 |
Captain Singleton: |
1722 |
Moll Flanders; Religious Courtship; A Journal of the Plague Year; and Colonel Jack. |
1724 |
The Fortunate Mistress [Roxana]; the first volume of A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (second and third volumes in 1725 and 1726). |
1725 |
The Complete English Tradesman (second volume, 1727). |
1726 |
The Political History of the Devil. |
1727 |
Conjugal Lewdness; and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions. |
1729 |
Wrote The Compleat English Gentleman (published in 1890). |
1731 |
Died 24 April, and buried in the dissenters’ burial grounds, Bunhill Fields, London. |
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICAL STUDIES
Books
Works with significant discussions of Roxana are indicated by an asterisk.
*Paul Alkon, Defoe and Fictional Time, Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press, 1979.
*David Blewett, Defoe’s Art of Fiction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1979.
Alan Dugald McKillop, The Early Masters of English Fiction, Laurence, Kansas, University of Kansas Press, 1968.
*Maximillian E. Novak, Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe, Berkeley-and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1962; * Defoe and the Nature of Man, London, Oxford University Press, 1963.
*John J. Richetti, Defoe’s Narratives: Situations and Structures, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975.
*G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1965; * Defoe and Casuistry, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1971.
*James Sutherland, Daniel Defoe: A Critical Study, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1971.
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1963 (first published 1957).
*Everett Zimmerman, Defoe and the Novel, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975.
Articles
Benjamin Boyce, ‘The Question of Emotion in Defoe’, Studies in Philology, 50 (1953), 45–58.
Terry J. Castle, ‘“Amy, Who Knew My Disease”: A Psychosexual Pattern in Defoe’s Roxana’, ELH, 46 (1979), 81–96.
Robert D. Hume, ‘The Conclusion of Defoe’s Roxana: Fiasco or Tour de Force?’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 3 (1970), 475–9O.
Wallace Jackson, ‘Roxana and the Development of Defoe’s Fiction’, Studies in the Novel, 7 (1975), 181–94.
Ralph E. Jenkins, ‘The Structure of Roxana’, Studies in the Novel, 2 (1970), 145-58.
Maximillian E.
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