Moll Flanders - Softcover

Defoe, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140433139 ISBN 13: 9780140433135

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1989

Synopsis

Daniel Defoe's bawdy tale of a woman's struggle for independence and redemption, Moll Flanders is edited with an introduction and notes by David Blewett in Penguin Classics.

Born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later, Moll Flanders' drive to find and hold on to a secure place in society propels her through incest, adultery, bigamy, prostitution and a resourceful career as a thief ('the greatest Artist of my time') before her crimes catche up with her, and she is transported to the colony of Virginia in the New World. If Moll Flanders is on one level a Puritan's tale of sin and repentance, through self-made, self-reliant Moll, Daniel Defoe's rich subtext conveys all the paradoxes and amoralities of the struggle for property and power in the newly individualistic society of Eighteenth-century England.

Based on the first edition of 1722, this volume includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, notes on currency and maps of London and Virginia in the late seventeenth century.
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) had a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, spy, and political pamphleteer. Over the course of his life Daniel Defoe wrote over two hundred and fifty books on economics, history, biography and crime, but is best remembered for the fiction he produced in late life, which includes Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). Defoe had a great influence on the development of the English novel and many consider him to be the first true novelist.

If you enjoyed Moll Flanders, you might like Samuel Richardson's Pamela, also available in Penguin Classics.

About this title

Review:

"The brilliance of Moll Flanders, and of the best of Defoe's other novels, is that they dramatize the uncertainty that goes with the opportunism, and show us a world in which, if you can make yourself, you can lose yourself too." -from the Introduction by John Mullan

From the Back Cover:

Born to a petty thief in London's notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and materialistic society, Moll Flanders recounts the "fortunes and misfortunes" of her turbulent life in this 1722 novel. Though Moll Flanders was shaped by the conventions of criminal biography, Defoe also drew on other literary traditions and his own rich background to create a remarkably original--and still controversial--work.

In addition to a critical introduction and substantial footnotes, this Broadview edition provides a wide range of writings by Defoe as well as contemporary responses to Moll Flanders. Other appendices include a selection of eighteenth-century writings on crime, prisons, and the Virginia colony.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0140433139
• ISBN 13: 9780140433135
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Blewett David