Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress

British writer Daniel Defoe is credited with being one of the first writers to dabble in longer-form fiction, eventually leading to the development of the novel format. His final work, published anonymously, follows the life of a remarkable woman who flouts the social strictures of the eighteenth century and takes up with a series of men in order to ensure the survival of her family—but always on her own terms and in a manner consistent with her own unique code of ethics.