Daniel Defoe was born in 1660, the son of a candlemaker in London. He originally intended to become a tradesman, but his incompetence with money (nearly all of his businesses failed) and strong interest in public affairs led him to his real vocation: writing. Beginning in 1700, he produced a torrent of pamphlets, newspaper articles, poems, and books on subjects ranging from accounts of true crimes to the history of the devil. Amazingly prolific, and often working just one step ahead of his creditors, Defoe transformed such genres as political commentary and journalism: he practically invented the English newspaper with his work for the Review, which he founded and published and of which he was sole author for nine years. Not surprisingly, given these conditions, Defoe’s writing is brisk, efficient, and concerned with contemporary life in all its variety. He brought these qualities to Moll Flanders, a novel that reflects his nonfiction writings on such contemporary topics as crime, prostitution, colonization, and the nature of marriage.
Women of ill repute. Though Moll Flanders is never, by modern standards, a prostitute, in seventeenth- to eighteenth-century terms she is branded as such.
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