After the success of Robinson Crusoe and its follow-ups, Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722. It's an episodic, picaresque novel that recounts Moll's long life of misadventures. It has a journalistic, plain style, with unadorned, prosaic speech that flows naturally from story to story.
The novel is written as a purported autobiography over the course of the narrator's life. As a young orphan in poverty, Moll claims she wants to be a "gentlewoman" when she gets older, not fully understanding what the term means. What she desires is simply independence and a life free from servitude. In adulthood, she pursues this in two ways. She first attempts to find security by marrying a wealthy husband, and-after several failures and diminishing options-she turns to thievery. In her interactions, Moll proves streetsmart, deft, and quick on her feet. By traveling back and forth between England and the American colonies, the novel offers a lens into different societies through a variety of occupations.
Moll is an enterprising female protagonist, a true individual. Though she receives some help, she is largely on her own in risky situations. She often relies on disguise and deceiving others, but she is always honest with the reader and tells us exactly what she is thinking, including her guilt and remorse.
Perfect for readers who love bold, resilient heroines and sweeping tales of survival against all odds. Defoe's masterful storytelling brings to life an unforgettable woman whose wit, determination, and quest for redemption will captivate you from London's mean streets to the colonial plantations of Virginia.
The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)