Fiction · 1722
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Moll Flanders tells its own life story in its own unrepentant voice: born in Newgate Prison to a mother transported to the colonies, married five times, a mistress more than once, and for a dozen years one of London's most successful thieves and pickpockets, until age and a final theft catch up with her and she's transported to Virginia herself — where she finds, of all things, a kind of prosperity and peace she never had in England.
Daniel Defoe published the novel in 1722, presenting it, in the fashion of the day, as a genuine memoir edited from Moll's own papers; its frank treatment of sex, crime and money without conventional moral punishment made it controversial from the start and has kept it a subject of argument — is Moll condemned or admired? — ever since.
Bibliomancer publishes the 1722 text exactly as Daniel Defoe wrote it.
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The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1661–1731 · Enlightenment
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660–1731) was born in London, the son of a tallow chandler, and was in turn a merchant, a bankrupt, a pamphleteer pilloried for satire, a government agent, and one of the first journalists. He was nearly sixty when he published Robinson Crusoe (1719); Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Roxana followed in quick succession.
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