Moll Flanders

These 'true confessions' of a remarkable and passionate youg woman are thought to have been based on the adventures of a real prisoner in Newgate where Moll was born. Ostensibly written as a warning to wrongdoers, the moral of Defoe's candid and cautionary tale is often lost in the sheer vitality of Moll - one of the supreme characters of English comic fiction.

Her fortunes and misfortunes - 'twelve years a Whore, five times a Wife (once to her own brother), twelve years a Thief, eight years a transported Felon' - plunge the reader into the exciting world of eighteenth-century low life.