The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will

be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine, where the names

and other circumstances of the person are concealed, and on this

account we must be content to leave the reader to pass his own opinion

upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as he pleases.

The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the

very beginning of her account she gives the reasons why she thinks fit

to conceal her true name, after which there is no occasion to say any

more about that.

It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and

the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered;

particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that

she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been

written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown

penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.

The pen employed in finishing her story, and making it what you now see

it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a dress fit to be

seen, and to make it speak language fit to be read. When a woman

debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring of debauchery

and vice, comes to give an account of all her vicious practices, and

even to descend to the particular occasions and circumstances by which

she ran through in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it

wrap it up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious

readers, to turn it to his disadvantage.

All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no

immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story; no, not to the

worst parts of her expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious

part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out,

and several other parts are very much shortened. What is left 'tis

hoped will not offend the chastest reader or the modest hearer; and as

the best use is made even of the worst story, the moral 'tis hoped will

keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to be

otherwise. To give the history of a wicked life repented of,

necessarily requires that the wicked part should be make as wicked as

the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to

the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if

related with equal spirit and life.

It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same brightness and

beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal part. If

there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allowed to say 'tis

because there is not the same taste and relish in the reading, and

indeed it is to true that the difference lies not in the real worth of

the subject so much as in the gust and palate of the reader.