About this title: Daniel Defoe's 1722 novel about a spirited and oddly appealing ex-prostitute and thief, now reformed, is not only a disturbingly realistic look at London's underworld, but one of the first works of fiction to explore the interior consciousness of its main character.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780192834034ISBN:0192834037
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Fine. Almost as new. No markings or creasing. Very slight edgewear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 432 p. Oxford World's Classics. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN-13:9780192834034ISBN:0192834037
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: 1998-05-14
ISBN-13:9780192834034ISBN:0192834037
Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
Edition: 10th
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Cary, North Carolina, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780192815705ISBN:0192815709
Description: Good. As issued No Jacket. Spine curl, cover reading creases, corner bumps, paper lifts at corners of cover, edgewear to covers, and other moderate to heavy shopwear. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: International Collectors Library, Garden City, New York
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Q5-No date. Book has some chipping and wear on the gutter edges, light wrinkling on the spine, discoloration and normal shelf wear otherwise very good. Dark brown covered boards with gilt lettering and design on the front and spine, silk ribbon bookmark, and gilt on the top page edges. "My true name is so well know in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there...." read more
Binding: Quarter leather
Publisher: Fine Editions Press, Cleveland
Date Published: 1953
Description: Good. 8vo (8 1/4"). Introduction by Earl Schenk Miers. Casing slightly stained. Half-title and title page long crease. xvii + 283 pp. read more
"One of my latest revelations regarding books is that I somehow need to pay my respects to the 17th century classics. That is, read some of the novels I should have read years ago, books most people read as teenagers or at least in college, where they (some of them) are mandatory. Having waltzed very skillfully among them when I needed to, because - blame it on taste - I was never ever attracted by picaresque novels, it's high time I did something about it.
So, ladies and gents, I give you Moll Flanders. Cheater, liar, thief, whore, irresponsible mother and incestuous woman all in one. How, in the end, knowing all these things about her and not agreeing with any, the reader still feels sympathy for her, it's all in Defoe's writing talent. Because somehow, during the never ending events in Moll's life, you kind of like her; despite the facts, she is still warm-hearted and kind, and you get the feeling she does what she does only because she has no other choice (and yes, I agree, in 17th century England being a widow with children and no income is not one of the brightest perspectives). I, for instance, was surprised to see how in each and every situation she found a way to overcome the problem, keeping herself out of prison, trusting the right people, moving into the right direction, placing her money in the right hands, ending in the right place, fully loaded. Because in life as we know it, things are never like this. It can work for two or three times, but eventually you're caught red handed, you're betrayed and left alone.
As hard as Defoe tried (did he?) to convince the readers that eventually she repented and felt sorry about the kind of life she had led, I'm not satisfied. Too obvious a happy ending for a woman who continued to live from the money she had stolen, even if her conscience was finally clean - finding one of her sons and eventually starting acting like a mother, when she was in her 60's.
So even if I found no particular pleasure in Defoe's style, I must appreciate the remarkable art with which he treats a subject like this."
"the person who was reading this used, 49 cent, copy of moll flanders before me stopped reading at page 26, judging by the abrupt cessation of circled words like "prattle", "would you were, sir", "brother fell", and "he would" i like to think about this person, and their busy pen. its so arbitrary - its not even words that might be unfamiliar to a moderately-literate reader. i tried to find a code in it "help, i am being held hostage by a mad librarian", but to no avail. almost every page has at least six circles or underlines and then suddenly - nothing. did the pen run out of ink? did they abandon moll flanders? did they fall out of a tree? its mysterious. what else is mysterious is moll flanders. she swans through this book, dripping babies from her body like a tree sheds leaves, stealing and whoring and manipulating men to keep her head above water and yet im not in love with her. how can this be? i mean, its a fine book, but i cant see falling in love with it or with her character. and honestly, i dont know what to make of the realization that if she had just stayed married to her brother in the first place, she would have avoided a whole lot of trouble and had a lovely son and a fruitful plantation. let this be a lesson to you: choose wisely; incest or a life of crime. there is no in-between."
"While the lack of chapter breaks still caused some difficulty (as in Robinson Crusoe) I found this narrative easier to follow. I found Moll to be a very sympathetic character, not nearly as wicked as she (and the society in which she lived) made her out to be. From the time she was born, the deck was stacked against her by a society which provided very few opportunities for women to support themselves; she was taken advantage of by unscrupulous men (yes, almost exclusively males). Twice husbands who would have been able to provide for her to some degree passed away leaving her with nothing. Another husband astonishingly turned out to be her half-brother - I mean, what are the odds?! She was so often alone and friendless. She mostly did the best she could with the curveballs she was thrown.
One part that didn't sit well with me, though, was her children. She had several children by her different husbands, several of them died, but excepting the one son in Virginia, we never find out what happened to those children! And that just kills me! She expressed her sorrow at parting from one (with her Lancashire husband), but other than that she seemed almost unemotional about her children until she meets up with her son/nephew in Virginia again."
"The story of Moll Flanders is definitely not as pornographic or unmoralizing as one would think from its description, though if you do think of the time its set in, even the smallest thought of what Moll Flanders tells in the book would be sinning. But for us, its not so bad, but it still gets to you. Moll Flanders tells the story herself about the life she has lead & why, another classic literature book based in England, Moll Flanders finds herself born out of Newgate prison & considered an orphan from her birth as her mother is set to die. She is brought up by a woman who takes in orphans & with great beauty & charisma, Moll Flanders (which is not her real name) charms the towns lady's, who take her in when her "governess" dies. Moll Flanders adapts & changes to everything, she learns & becomes better then the daughters of the lady she lives with & is seduced into the beginning of what her downfall will become by the eldest son of the lady. And when she marries the younger brother not entirely by choice & he dies, Moll Flanders has to find her way in the world that sees all women as nothing more then someone dependent on men. In this Moll Flanders tells of her many marriages, her many children, the whore she became, the thievery she did, & even without knowing the incest she married into. With all this Moll Flanders keeps to what shes wanted, what shes refused to do, when she was growing up. She was even the luckiest of thieves & all but her landed in Newgate, thats how she became known as the legend of Mrs. Moll Flanders. But when she is caught, ironically, in a crime she didn't commit, she finds her way on the path her mother had found herself in. Moll Flanders finds herself back in her birthplace of Newgate, awaiting the same sentence as her mother, till she sees one of the many husbands she had married arrive in Newgate himself, charged himself with a crime he hadn't been apart of, though a highway thief. Moll Flanders, a woman of any means, is what society never wanted her to be, but was something she had to become. Finding herself in pickles that she always seems to work her way out of. Moll Flanders is definitely a really well written book & a well told story that shares & enlightens us on another side of the 19th century. In this story of a woman who always wanted to be a lady, she was a woman with a different definition of it."
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