*The supposed autobiography of its heroine, Moll Flanders tells the astonishing story of a woman on the make, using fair means and foul to survive in eighteenth-century London.*A key work in the development of the novel, this new edition offers a critically edited text and a wide-ranging introduction.*The introduction looks at the circumstances out of which the novel grew, its strengths and weaknesses as fiction, its reception and influence and the social and cultural issues examined in the novel, including the position of women, the role of religionand providence, and the questionable relationship between crime and its punishments.*Comprehensive notes clarify meanings, allustions, and other references, and note changes between the later editions of the text.*Includes a glossary, and a note on money.*Maps of England, London, and the American colonies.New to this edition*Introduction by Linda Bree, providing a fuller historical context and critical discussion.*Up-to-date bibliography.*New chronology of the author.*New notes, drawing on scholarship of the last 39 years, since the previous edition.*Glossary, note on money, maps.*Reset text.'Twelve Year a Whore, fives times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent'So the title page of this extraordinary novel describes the career of the woman known as Moll Flanders, whose real name we never discover. And so, in a tour-de-force of writing by the businessman, political satirist, and spy Daniel Defoe, Moll tells herown story, a vivid and racy tale of a woman's experience in the seamy side of life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England and America. Born in Newgate prison, and seduced in the home of her adoptive family, she learns to live off herwits, defying the traditional depiction of women as helpless victims. First published in 1722, and one of the earliest novels in the English language, its account of opportunism, endurance, and survival speaks as strongly to us today as it did to itsoriginal readers.
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