Publisher's Synopsis
'What Rees does in this engaging book is to give us the extra historical information we need to create a richer context for Moll's story'
The Guardian
The Times 'Ably and entertainingly Rees pictures Moll's world of Stuart London. She traces the sources of her remarkable story and the overlaps between Defoe's life and that of his heroine. This is a readable, informative and colourful account'
Daily Express 'Rees is a lucid, intelligent guide'
Sunday Herald Daniel Defoe's fictional heroine Moll Flanders is famous for her criminal and sexual adventures, racily portrayed in big and small screen romps as bawdy wench, fallen woman and proto-feminist trailblazer. But who was she? And what world did she really inhabit? To answer these questions Sian Rees takes her readers on a journey of literary and historical detection, across continents, cultures and centuries. Following Moll's tumultuous life, the story moves from Jacobean England to Jamestown, Virginia; from the English Civil War to the struggles of the Powhatan Indians; and from the metropolis of London to the hamlet of Annapolis in the early eighteenth century. Introducing us to a rogues' gallery of real-life versions of Moll, it is as fast-moving and rich in incident as Defoe's great novel.
