Moll Flanders: A Norton Critical Edition

Moll Flanders is one of the best-selling novels of all time.

This Norton Critical Edition is again based on the first edition text (1722), the only text known to be Defoe’s own.  It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and the editor’s essay outlining the novel’s textual history.

“Contexts” collects related documents on criminal transport, contemporary accounts of lives of crime, and colonial laws as they applied to servants, slaves, and runaways.

“Criticism” includes eleven interpretations by Juliet McMaster, Everett Zimmerman, Maximillian E. Novak, Henry Knight Miller, Ian A. Bell, Carol Kay, Paula B. Backscheider, John Rietz, Ann Louise Kibbie, John Richetti, and Ellen Pollak.

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included.

Albert J. Rivero is Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English at Marquette University. He has published widely on the literature of the British long eighteenth century. His most recent publication is Daniel Defoe in Context (coedited with George Justice). He is the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Gulliver’s Travels and Moll Flanders.