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Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, book cover
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Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

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Under 100
First published
1722
Pages
274
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Listen to Moll Flanders Audiobook Free

13 h 32 min · 23 parts

  1. Preface

    15:06

  2. My true name is so well known...

    28:32

  3. Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell...

    23:15

  4. But things did not end here...

    31:22

  5. I was reduced very low indeed...

    41:14

  6. I loved the company indeed of men of mirth...

    40:06

  7. But I come now to my own case...

    30:03

  8. I was now the most unhappy of all women...

    42:17

  9. When I parted with my brother...

    25:18

  10. We lived thus near two years...

    29:29

  11. I was now a single person again...

    27:38

  12. I came the next evening...

    34:25

  13. He rose before me in the morning...

    45:39

  14. While I was here, and before I was brought to bed...

    40:52

  15. The first sensible reflect I made...

    54:10

  16. My comrade, having the brand of an old offender...

    36:53

  17. With all these fine compliments we parted...

    38:18

  18. I had dressed myself up in a very mean habit...

    29:13

  19. It was not long after the affair with the mercer...

    28:35

  20. I was now returned to London...

    35:43

  21. In the meantime my poor distressed governess...

    43:26

  22. I must return to my own case...

    40:40

  23. Here was a perplexity...

    49:51

Moll Flanders (1722) is a public domain work.

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About this book

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, affairs, 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.

From the opening pages

My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is not be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.

I have been told that in one of our neighbour nations, whether it be in France or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, that when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of the Government, and put into a hospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest, industrious behaviour.

Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper in the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed to very great distresses, even before I was capable either of understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of life which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.

About the author

Daniel Defoe - BDeBooks
Daniel Defoe

Four books here, and only two of them were signed. Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719 as the account of a mariner of York, written by himself, and readers took that literally for a while.

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Book facts

First published
1722
Reading time
About 10 hours
Pages
274
Language
English
Formats
PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook