Moll Flanders

Originally published in 1722, 'Moll Flanders' is one of the earliest picaresque novels in English by Daniel Defoe, an English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719-22). It has both captivated and shocked countless readers. It is a masterpiece of fiction that is written in the form of an autobiographical memoir. Daniel Defoe's roguish heroine tells the scandalous facts of her adventurous life with such simple and straightforward sincerity and with such a wealth of intimate detail that the reader is soon convinced that Moll must, indeed, be a person of authenticity. Having been imprisoned for political offenses and having experienced severe economic losses in his own life, Defoe demonstrates early on in this novel how circumstances and a fear of poverty can drive one into a life of crime. He writes with authority when Moll speaks of poverty as a frightful spectre .