Moll Flanders

First published in 1722, Daniel Defoe’s novel offers the supposed confessions of a woman born in Newgate prison to a convict mother. Left to make her own way, Moll passes through a string of marriages, seductions, and betrayals, then reinvents herself as a resourceful thief before landing back in the same prison where her life began. She tells her story in a frank, unsentimental voice that refuses easy moral judgment and treats each of her choices as the reasonable act of a woman with no safety net beneath her. Bawdy, shrewd, and surprisingly modern, it stands among the earliest English novels and an early portrait of a self-made survivor. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available.