823 V1 4 EDITION DE LUXE THIS EDITION OF THE WORKS OF SUBSCRIBERS ONLY, IS LIMITED ΤΟ INTRODUCTION M TOLL FLANDERS, published in January, 1722, makes a claim, like so many of Defoe's narratives, to a manuscript source. There is no pretence, however, that the manuscript is reproduced exactly. "The original of this story is put into new words," wrote Defoe in his preface, "and the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered. . . ." It has generally been understood that this statement of our author was only a fiction to make his book sell; the opinion has never prevailed widely, as in the case of the Memoirs of a Cavalier, that this work was from another hand than Defoe's. True, some of the more ignorant eighteenthcentury readers were imposed upon, as Defoe hoped they would be, and Moll Flanders has been accepted by a few people as a real person. A chap-book1 published in Dublin in 1730, which pretended to supplement Defoe's information about her, her "governess," and her Lancashire husband, stated that she and her husband settled finally in Galway, where she died in April, 1723, seventy-four years old. It is largely 1 Fortune's Fickle Distribution: In Three Parts. Containing, First, The Life and Death of Moll Flanders. Secondly, The Life of Jane Hackabout, her Governess. Thirdly, The Life of James MacFaul, Moll Flanders' Lancashire Husband. 401060 this later explicit information that led to a belief in the actuality of Moll Flanders. But it is evident that if the heroine of the Dublin chap-book ever lived on this earth, she was not the same as the heroine of Defoe's story. The Irish Moll died at the age of seventy-four in the year 1723; Defoe's heroine, supposedly writing her biography in 1683, declares that she is "almost seventy years of age." It is evident that she and the lady who forty years later was only seventy-four are not one and the same person. The fact that Moll Flanders of the Dublin chapbook, even if a real woman, could not be the Moll Flanders of Defoe, does not prove conclusively that the latter never existed. We know that in many cases Defoe wrote and had published histories of real criminals; and it is possible that the life of some such person gave him the hint for Moll Flanders, as the life of the pirate, Avery, gave him the hint for Captain Singleton. If such is the truth, and if the original of Moll Flanders is ever identified, it may turn out that she was the Mary Flanders who was said in the chap-book to be the mother of the Dublin heroine. Granted that each may have been taken from reality, the ages of the two women do not forbid such a supposition. Neither does the fact that, in the last pages of Defoe's book, Moll seems to have only one child alive, her Virginian son; for Defoe, though perhaps giving to his heroine a nickname which she actually bore, may have altered at will the facts of her life. And so, without feeling obliged for a moment to suppose that Defoe's Moll Flanders was based on any manuscript but his own, we may, if we choose, suppose the story to have been suggested by the life of some real woman. The title in full of this book was, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c., who was born in Newgate, and during a Life of continued Variety, for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Years a Whore, Five Times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother,) Twelve Years a Thief, Eight Years a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums. The first edition, as I have said, appeared in January, 1722. A second followed in July of the same year; a third, in December; and a fourth, in July, 1723. Moll Flanders is the one of Defoe's criminal narratives which is of the greatest interest to-day. It has all the circumstantial vividness which we expect in a story of Defoe's, with the difference that the circumstantiality here almost never becomes tedious, as it too often does in our author's other works. It interests us in the account of Moll's meeting her son 1 As is sometimes the case, Defoe here is once or twice inaccurate in matters of fact. His geographical knowledge, as a rule remarkably good, is a little at fault when he places Westmoreland County in Virginia "full a hundred miles up Potomac River," which, by the way, is "frequently so broad, that when we were in the middle we could not see land on either side for many leagues together." His history, too, was at fault when he made Moll Flanders consider moving to Pennsylvania before the grant to William Penn was made which brought that colony into existence. > in Virginia no less than in the accounts of her thieving, or of her efforts, in her alleged widowhood, to capture some well-to-do man for a husband. And the horrid sombreness of Newgate could not be more vividly presented than it is in the jail scenes. We see its hellish revelry when the crowd of prisoners flout Moll on her arrival, wishing her joy that she is among them and drinking to her with the brandy which they put up to her score, till mocking and blaspheming they reel or caper away, the last of them singing "as she goes, the following piece of Newgate wit: If I swing by the string, I shall hear the bell ring, And then there's an end of poor Jenny.' 999 The gloomy sadness of Newgate we see, on the other hand, on the day when some of the criminals are to be executed. "The next morning there was a sad scene indeed in the prison. The first thing I was saluted with in the morning was the tolling of the great bell at St. Sepulchre's, which ushered in the day. As soon as it began to toll, a dismal groaning and crying was heard from the condemned hole, where there lay six poor souls, who were to be executed that day, some for one crime, some for another, and two for murder." But it is not only circumstantial vividness which makes Moll Flanders interesting to-day. Its heroine comes nearer having the life and individuality of the people created by our great novelists than any other person of Defoe's invention, with the |