Moll Flanders: An Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism
Daniel Defoe, Albert J. RiveroBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Moll Flanders is one of the best-selling novels of all time.
This Norton Critical Edition is again based on the first edition text
(1722), the only text known to be Defoe’s own. It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and the editor’s essay outlining the novel’s textual history.
“Contexts” collects related documents on criminal transport,
contemporary accounts of lives of crime, and colonial laws as they applied to servants, slaves, and runaways.
“Criticism” includes eleven interpretations by Juliet McMaster, Everett
Zimmerman, Maximillian E. Novak, Henry Knight Miller, Ian A. Bell,
Carol Kay, Paula B. Backscheider, John Rietz, Ann Louise Kibbie, John
Richetti, and Ellen Pollak.
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.
Moll Flanders is born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later. Her drive to find a secure place in society propels her through incest, adultery, bigamy, prostitution, and a resourceful career as a thief, before she is returned to Newgate.