The original title says it all: 'The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders who was Born in Newgate and during a Life of continue'd Variety for Three-score 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 died a Penitent.' So begins Moll Flanders Daniel Defoe’s honest portrayal of one woman’s<br>struggle for economic survival in an unsympathetic world. Told with<br>uncompromising directness and an extraordinary empathy it is as Virginia Woolf<br>once claimed ‘one of the few English novels we can call indisputably great’.