Author: Daniel Defoe
Release Date: December, 1995 [EBook #370] [This
file was last updated on March 5, 2003]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK Moll Flanders ***
The Fortunes & Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
&c.
Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu’d
Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood,
was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof
once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight
Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew
Rich, liv’d Honest, and dies a Penitent.
Written from her own Memorandums . . .
by Daniel Defoe
The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances,
that it will be hard for a private history to be taken
for genuine, where the names and other circumstances
of the person are concealed, and on this account we
must be content to leave the reader to pass his own
opinion upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as
he pleases.
The author is here supposed to be writing her own
history, and in the very beginning of her account
she gives the reasons why she thinks fit to conceal
her true name, after which there is no occasion to
say any more about that.
It is true that the original of this story is put
into new words, and the style of the famous lady we
here speak of is a little altered; particularly she
is made to tell her own tale in modester words that
she told it at first, the copy which came first to
hand having been written in language more like one
still in Newgate than one grown penitent and humble,
as she afterwards pretends to be.
The pen employed in finishing her story, and making
it what you now see it to be, has had no little difficulty
to put it into a dress fit to be seen, and to make
it speak language fit to be read. When a woman
debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring
of debauchery and vice, comes to give an account of
all her vicious practices, and even to descend to the
particular occasions and circumstances by which she
ran through in threescore years, an author must be
hard put to it wrap it up so clean as not to give
room, especially for vicious readers, to turn it to
his disadvantage.
All possible care, however, has been taken to give
no lewd ideas, no immodest turns in the new dressing
up of this story; no, not to the worst parts of her
expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious
part of her life, which could not be modestly told,
is quite left out, and several other parts are very
much shortened. What is left ’tis hoped
will not offend the chastest reader or the modest
hearer; and as the best use is made even of the worst
story, the moral ’tis hoped will keep the reader
serious, even where the story might incline him to
be otherwise. To give the history of a wicked
life repented of, necessarily requires that the wicked
part should be make as wicked as the real history
of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to
the penitent part, which is certainly the best and
brightest, if related with equal spirit and life.
