444 pages
English language
Published Jan. 1, 1973 by Norton.
Moll Flanders, an authoritative text
backgrounds and sources; criticism. A Norton critical edition
by Daniel Defoe
3 stars
(2 reviews)
These are the true confessions of a remarkable and passionate young woman are thought to have been based on the adventures of a real prisoner in Newgate where Moll was born. ostensibly written as a warning to wrongdoers, the moral of Defoe's candid and cautionary tale is often lost in the sheer vitality of Moll - one of the supreme characters of English comic fiction.
Her fortunes and misfortunes - 'twelve years a Whore, five times a Wife (once to her own brother), twelve years a Thief, eight years a transported Felon' - plunge the reader into the exciting world of the eighteenth-century low life.
Subjects
- Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731
- Children of prisoners -- Fiction
- British -- Virginia -- Fiction
- Women -- England -- Fiction
- Prostitutes -- Fiction
- Repentance -- Fiction
- Criminals -- Fiction
- London (England) -- Fiction
- Virginia -- Fiction