Moll Flanders, letteratura inglese
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Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
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Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
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Title: Moll Flanders
Author: Daniel Defoe
Release Date: December, 1995 [EBook #370] [This file
was last updated on March 5, 2003]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
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*** 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 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.
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
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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
Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe
5
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,
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