Moll Flanders Defoe, Daniel

Written in a time when criminal biographies enjoyed great success, Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles through poverty and sin in search of property and power. Born in Newgate Prison to a picaresque mother, Moll propels herself through marriages, periods of success and destitution, and a trip to the New World and back, only to return to the place of her birth as a popular prostitute and brilliant thief. The story of Moll Flanders vividly illustrates Defoe's themes of social mobility and predestination, sin, redemption and reward.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the 1721 edition printed by Chetwood in London, the only edition approved by Defoe.

"From the Trade Paperback edition.

Annotation:
Daniel Defoe's 1722 novel about a spirited and oddly appealing ex-prostitute and thief, now reformed, is not only a disturbingly realistic look at London's underworld, but one of the first works of fiction to explore the interior consciousness of its main character.

Author Bio

Daniel Defoe

The son of a well-to-do butcher, Defoe became a London tradesman and merchant. He was well educated and kept notebooks from an early age in which he wrote short fictions. He also daydreamed about adventurous voyages in the South Seas and was excited by the prospect of colonizing new (and utopian) lands. These ideas were to bear fruit in his great work, ROBINSON CRUSOE. Defoe was a gregarious man and the father of eight children. A Dissenter who was a perennial foe of the Tories, he was often jailed for his political writings. He was pilloried for his savagely ironic pamphlet, "The Shortest Way with Dissenters" (considered libelous), which recommended massacring them. After the more tolerant William III ousted the Papist James II, Defoe worked loyally for the king, writing poems, satires, and polemics in defense of his policies. It wasn't until he was in his 50s that Defoe turned to writing fiction, and his stories of thieves and prostitutes were immensely successful. Plagued by creditors all his life, he died at 71 while he was in hiding from one of them, in Ropemaker Street, an area of London not far from where he was born.

Praise

"Moll Flanders has a spirit that loves to breast the storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers." - Virginia Woolf

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Pocketbook
Number of Pages:		0320
Publisher:		Bantam Classics

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Moll Flanders (Pocketbook)

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