The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

First published in 1722, this novel is told as the memoir of a woman born in Newgate Prison who lives by her wits in seventeenth-century England and the American colonies. Moll Flanders takes a succession of husbands, some of them bigamous, works as a servant and a thief in London, and is transported to Virginia after a career of crime. She records marriages made for money, periods of prosperity and want, and the aliases she uses to survive. The narrative stays close to her calculations about security, sex, and property. It is a picaresque first-person account of a woman moving through the legal and social traps available to the poor.

Quarter bound in maroon cloth with light brown paper boards printed in black and maroon with text. Light brown slipcase. Maroon endpapers.