Prudence and Plagiarism in the 1740 Continuation of Defoe's Roxana

• Published in: Library Vol. 10; no. 4; pp. 357 - 371
• Main Author: Seager, Nicholas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Oxford University Press 01.12.2009; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Applebee, Elizabeth; Content analysis; Defoe, Daniel (1660-1731); Literary criticism; Literature; Plagiarism; Source studies
• ISSN: 0024-2160; 1744-8581
• DOI: 10.1093/library/10.4.357

A number of spurious continuations of Defoe’s Roxana (1724) were published up to the end of the nineteenth century. One unjustly neglected later version is that which appeared in 1740, attributed to Elizabeth Applebee. At least seven different texts are worked into the Applebee edition, making it a complex production, the major source being William de Britaine’s seventeenth-century conduct manual, Humane Prudence. This article recovers the complicated publication history of the latter work and traces its modification and use in the 1740 Roxana. It concludes by asking why the continuations of Defoe’s novel have been neglected, asserting that their history can reveal much about the opportunism of eighteenth century publishers, the commercial pressures on print culture of the time, and shifting expectations about narrative closure.