Appearing three years after Defoe’s most famous work, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders stands as one of the important precursors to the modern novel. Narrated in the first person, it is the autobiography of Moll Flanders. Moll leads an eventful life, which includes travel with gypsies, five marriages, incest, prostitution, and twelve years as one of London’s most notorious and successful thieves. When she is finally caught, she escapes the death sentence with the help of a minister who encourages her to repent her evil ways. Transported to Virginia with one of her husbands, she buys her freedom, sets up as a planter, and increases her amassed wealth with the income from a plantation. In her old age, she returns to England, where she resolves to spend the rest of her years in penitence for the life she has led. Defoe paints an unforgettable picture of the seamy underside of England. A masterful gold digger, conniver, and survivor, Moll exploits her formidable talents to evade poverty. The novel’s power lies in the force and attraction of Moll's  
character, which catches the reader’s imagination and sympathy. But it also lies in the delightfully subversive moral of the tale that seems not to be that wickedness will be punished, but rather that one can live a profligate life and not only get away with it, but in fact prosper from it too. JSD