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    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders"
    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders"
    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders"
    Ebook43 pages44 minutes

    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535828765
    A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders" - Gale

      1

      Moll Flanders

      Daniel Defoe

      1722

      Introduction

      Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722 after a long career of writing nonfiction. Many critics have speculated that Defoe's story of a beautiful and greedy woman who turns to crime is not a novel in the true sense but a work combining biography and fiction. Defoe (and others) wrote numerous accounts of various women in early eighteenth-century London named Moll who made their fame as thieves and pickpockets, and the criminal records of that period in London reveal the accounts of women who were arrested for stealing. Many critics and historians argue that a woman named Elizabeth Atkins, a notorious thief who died in prison in 1723, was one of Defoe's inspirations for the character of Moll Flanders.

      Whatever the sources of Defoe's popular work may have been, the novel has endured nearly three hundred years of changing tastes and mores and has secured its author's position as one of the most well-respected English writers and, some say, as the father of the novel form.

      Author Biography

      Looking over the full life of Daniel Defoe, there seems to be little that the Englishman did not attempt or experience. He was a trainee for the ministry, a poet, a businessman, a shopkeeper, a historian, an investor, a soldier, and a writer of fictional works as well as political and social tracts. Many of his business dealings put him on the brink of financial failure, and a number of his writings landed him in jail. His political writings, though, were ultimately so well-regarded and widely quoted that, according to Paula R. Backscheider in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, echoes of them exist in, for instance, the United States Constitution. In spite of this, Defoe is currently best known for his works of fiction, including Moll Flanders.

      Defoe is believed to have been born around 1660 to James and Alice Foe in London, England. While the family was solidly middle-class, Defoe grew up in hardship, primarily because of his father's religious views. James Foe was a Nonconformist, a Protestant who refused to conform to the tenets of the restored Church of England (Anglican). Because of this, his son could not attend Oxford or Cambridge but was able to attend one of the many dissenting academies set up in England, to be trained for the ministry.

      Defoe decided in the early 1680s that he was much more interested in business than in religion. He first became a hosiery merchant, then he invested in a variety of ventures, including the diving bell, civet cats, international shipping, and property. In 1691, he went bankrupt but was able to settle with his creditors, and soon thereafter he started a brick business.

      Amid all of these efforts, Defoe found time to fight with the Duke of Monmouth in an unsuccessful attempt to

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