Daniel Defoe

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe

Jacket Description/Flap: 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. Review Quotes: " Defoe's excellence it is, to make me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, and to raise me while I read him, into the universal man." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge "From the Trade Paperback edition."Biographical Note: Daniel Defoe was born Daniel Foe in London in 1660. It was perhaps, ineveitable that Defoe, an outspoken man, would become a political journalist. As a Puritan he believed God had given him a mission to print the truth, that is, to proselytize on religion and politics, and in fact, he became a prolific pamphleteer satirizing the hypocrisies of both Church and State. Defoe admired William III, and his poem "The True-Born Englishman "(1701) won him the King's friendship. But an ill-timed satire on High Church extremists, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, published during Queen Anne's reign, resulted in his being pilloried and imprisoned for seditious libel in 1703. At fifty-nine Defoe turned to fiction, completing "The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe"(1719), partly based on the saga of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor; Moll Flanders (1722); "Colonel Jack" (1722); "A Journal of the Plague Years"(1722); and "Roxana or the Fortunate Mistress" (1724). Review Quotes: "Defoe's excellence it is, to make me forget my specific class, character, and circumstances, and to raise me while I read him, into the universal man." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge "From the Trade Paperback edition."Publisher Marketing: As Moll Flanders struggles for survival amid the harsh social realities of seventeenth-century England, there is but one snare she is determined to avoid - the deadly snare of poverty. On the twisting path that leads from her birth in Newgate prison to her final prosperous respectability, love is regarded as worth no more than its weght in gold; and such matters as bigamy, incest, theft, and prostitution occasion but a brief blush before they are reckoned in terms of profit and losss. Yet so pure is her candor, so healthy her animal appetites, so indomitable her resilience through every vicissitude of fortune, that this extraordinary wench emerges as far more than a prototype of the mercantile mind. In "Moll Flanders" Defoe added a fresh dimension to the art of writing. "We seem to see Defoe's characters through the crytal-clear medium of his style with perfect verisimilitude, as real as if we saw them in a mirror that was so flawless that it was invisible, " writes Kennth Rexroth. Virginia Woolf ranked "Moll Flanders" as "among the few English novels which we can call indisputably great."Publisher Marketing: 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. Review Citations:

Ingram Paperback Advance 07/01/2005 pg. 63 (EAN 9780451529855, Mass Market Paperbound)

Kliatt 05/01/2004 pg. 53 (EAN 9781572703407, Analog Audio Cassette)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1995 pg. 163 (EAN 9780679601333, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 234 (EAN 9780679405481, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 154 (EAN 9780679405481, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 201 (EAN 9780679405481, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Defoe, Daniel Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was an English novelist, pamphleteer, journalist and political agent. He is best known for his novels Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, and for his Journal of the Plague Year.