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 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
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. It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same
brightness and beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal part. If there is any truth in that
suggestion, I must be allowed to say 'tis because there is not the same taste and relish in the reading,
and indeed it is to true that the difference lies not in the real worth of the subject so much as in the gust
and palate of the reader. But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read it, and
how to make the good uses of it which the story all along recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that
such readers will be more leased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with the relation,
and with the end of the writer than with the life of the person written of. There is in this story abundance
of delightful incidents, and all of them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully given them in
the relating, that naturally instructs the reader, either one way or other.
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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
