Synopses & Reviews
This is the spirited story of a survivor whose racy anecdotes and shady dealings only underline her essential warmth and goodness. But there is nothing sentimental about Moll, who presents herself warts and all. Though her adventures take her abroad, she remains the vivid creation of London.
Moll Flanders, pickpocket and prostitute–a mercantile genius trading in the oldest human commodity–has been for the past three centuries an enduring representative of reckless vitality combined with unshakable inner virtue. Daniel Defoe manages his story with such skill that our affection for his heroine increases with each astonishing sin she commits.
Moll’s adventures–possibly taken by Defoe from the story of some real criminal he met in Newgate, who “five times a wife, twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon, at last grew rich, lived honest and died a penitent”–is told with the directness of narrative and reality of incident in which Defoe, often called the father of the novel, has never been equaled.
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Synopsis
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 Hardcover edition.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. xxvii-xxviii).
About the Author
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a novelist, critic, and essayist whose works include such classics as A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Voyage Out (the latter available from the Modern Library in both cloth and paper).