ortunate Mistress_ came out.
Because Defoe had not indicated the end of his chief characters so
clearly as he usually did in his stories, several of these later
editions carried on the history of the heroine. Probably none of the
continuations was by Defoe himself, though the one in the edition of
1745 has been attributed to him. For this reason, and because it has
some literary merit, it is included in the present edition.

That this continuation was not by Defoe is attested in various ways. In
the first place, it tells the history of Roxana down to her death in
July, 1742, a date which Defoe would not have been likely to fix, for
he died himself in April, 1731. Moreover, the statement that she was
sixty-four when she died, does not agree with the statement at the
beginning of Defoe's narrative that she was ten years old in 1683. She
must have been born in 1673, and consequently would have been sixty-nine
in 1742. This discrepancy, however, ceases to be important when we
consider the general confusion of dates in the part of the book
certainly by Defoe. The title-page announces that his heroine was "known
by the name of the Lady Roxana, in the Time of King Charles II." She
must have been known by this name when she was a child of eleven or
twelve, then, for she was ten when her parents fled to England "about
1683," and Charles II. died in February, 1685. Moreover, she was not
married till she was fifteen; she lived eight years with her husband;
and then she was mistress successively to the friendly jeweller, the
Prince, and the Dutch merchant. Yet after this career, she returned to
London in time to become a noted toast among Charles II.'s courtiers and
to entertain at her house that monarch and the Duke of Monmouth.

A stronger argument for different authorship is the difference in style
between the continuation of _Roxana_ and the earlier narrative. In the
continuation Defoe's best-known mannerisms are lacking, as two instances
will show. Critics have often called attention to the fact that
_fright_, instead of _frighten_, was a favourite word of Defoe. Now
_frighten_, and not _fright_, is the verb used in the continuation.
Furthermore, I have pointed out in a previous introduction[1] that Defoe
was fond of making his characters _smile_, to show either kindliness or
shrewd penetration. They do not _smile_ in the continuation.

There are other differences between the original story of _The Fortunate
Mistress_ and th