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During the denouement of Daniel Defoe's Roxana (1724), the protagonists daughter Susan from her first marriage reappears, prompting Roxana to fear that the "Life full of prosperous Wickedness" she has led since abandoning her five legitimate children will be exposed to her new husband.1 Knowing that no good can come to her from Susans investigations, Roxana at one point declares: "I dreaded the Sequel of the Story" (1724:287). Her statement proves unwittingly prescient, as this novel was reprinted during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a number of continuations. Just as Robinson Crusoe only took the shape that we recognize from our array of modern editions at the start of the twentieth century, when Crusoe's Farther Adventures was decisively lopped off, so Roxana only became the novel we read now at a similar time when these sequels were put to bed.2 They have since slumbered with few interruptions until quite recently: amidst a smattering of recent studies by John Mullan, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, and Robert Griffin, Spiro Peterson's unpublished 1953 doctorate remains the fullest scholarly treatment.3
Amongst six distinct continuations of Roxana (originally entitled The Fortunate Mistress) in the eighteenth century, the most significant ones came in 1740, 1745, and 1775. The latter two have come in for most commentary in what critical work has been done. The Life and Adventures of Roxana, the Fortunate Mistress; or, Most Unhappy Wife (1745) prioritized the heroine's nom de plume in its title - a 1742 edition with no continuation started this trend, which still endures. It was, in the guise of a closely related 1765 continuation, the version of the novel that prevailed during the nineteenth century. In the 1745 and 1765 editions, Roxana's dread of a sequel proves justified, as her past life as a high society courtesan is exposed to her husband, the Dutch merchant. He disinherits her, and Roxana dies impoverished, conscience-stricken but unrepentant, in a debtors' jail.4
The History of Mademoiselle de Beleau; or, The New Roxana, the Fortunate Mistress (1775) is significant on the one hand because it was the first known attribution of the novel to Defoe, and on the other hand because of the extent to which the publishers rewrote and abridged the original Roxana, whereas...