Moll Flanders

One of the first novels using a picaresque story-telling technique, this novel set the standard for the style—one I soon adopted. Good stories, some spicy for the day, are told in a logical progression, which gave rise, methinks, to Twain and certainly me. Great vignettes told un-attached but somehow part of a progression. 

Sometimes called the female version of Tom Jones, Moll loses her mother (who is a convict) and eventually suffers the complications of being female when she falls in love and becomes pregnant by someone who can’t marry. Things go from bad to worse when she marries someone she doesn’t love, and faces instability all over again when she becomes a widow.

Thus begins her adventuring to find a husband who will give her the security she needs to survive. She burns through a bevvy of men who disappoint her on many accounts and has—and abandons—children at a remarkable rate as… show more.

Defoe’s other novels are often overshadowed by his most famous, Robinson Crusoe, but most are absolute romps, and Moll Flanders is no exception. Narrator Moll is bumptious, buxom, and completely beguiling as a protagonist who just won’t quit: from an inauspicious start in life (born to a convicted felon in Newgate, the worst prison in London), she sets out to make her fortune – and has a series of remarkable adventures along the way. At first it’s the old tale of master-seduces-maid – but Moll’s much too chipper and clever to let being a “fallen woman” dent her ambition,… show more.