40 Fun Facts About Moll Flanders

In Defoe's novel, Moll Flanders is born inside which notorious London prison while her mother awaits punishment?

Newgate was a jail Defoe knew from the inside: he was held there himself in 1703 over a satirical pamphlet about religious Dissenters.

Defoe published Moll Flanders three years after which castaway novel had made him a famous author?

Robinson Crusoe ran through four editions before the end of 1719, a late triumph for a writer who was already in his late fifties.

In the American colonies, Moll Flanders discovers that her third husband is actually which close relative?

Her brother, strictly a half-sibling: her mother-in-law's tale of being shipped out from an English jail reveals that the two share a mother.

By which old legal custom does Moll Flanders's condemned mother win a delay to her hanging?

Pleading her belly won Moll's mother a respite of about seven months, and once the baby arrived her sentence was changed to exile in the colonies.

Which British actor played Moll's Lancashire husband in the 1996 ITV serial of Moll Flanders scripted by Andrew Davies?

Daniel Craig played the charming fortune-hunter a full decade before he first appeared as James Bond in Casino Royale.

Which actor plays Hibble, the servant who reads Moll's memoirs to her daughter, in the 1996 film Moll Flanders?

Morgan Freeman accepted a modest salary because he liked the script, which keeps little of the novel beyond its heroine's name.

After a minister petitions for her, Moll Flanders's death sentence is reduced to which other punishment?

Transportation meant being shipped to the American colonies and sold into service, but Moll talks the captain into giving her a private cabin away from the other convicts.

Which criminal trade does Moll Flanders's beloved Lancashire husband follow before the pair meet again in jail?

Highwayman was his calling both before and after he met her; the morning after her next wedding, Moll spots him fleeing a coach robbery.

To which American colony does Moll Flanders sail with her plantation-owning third husband to meet his mother?

Virginia is named on the novel's long title page, and Moll sails home to England alone once the marriage breaks down.

Which literary label, borrowed from Spanish rogue tales, do critics attach to Defoe's episodic novel Moll Flanders?

Picaresque novels follow a quick-witted rogue through loosely linked adventures, and Moll's hops between husbands, cons and thefts fit the pattern.

Which band of wanderers does Moll Flanders recall travelling with as a tiny child before a parish takes her in?

Gypsies, the novel's word for Romani travellers, are Moll's earliest memory; she suspects she hid from them and refused to go any farther.

In which Essex town is the orphaned Moll Flanders raised by a poor nurse who keeps a little school?

Colchester's magistrates took pity on the three-year-old and arranged for her care, and in 2018 a musical version of the novel was staged in the town's Mercury Theatre.

As a small girl, Moll Flanders makes the town ladies laugh by insisting she will grow up to be what?

A gentlewoman, to little Moll, just means a woman who earns her own bread and never goes into service, which is not at all what her visitors understand by the word.

By which name is the teenage Moll Flanders known in the wealthy household where both sons of the family pursue her?

Mrs. Betty is what the family calls her; her true name is never revealed, and she says 'Moll Flanders' was a label that fellow thieves pinned on her.

Moll Flanders's second husband, a spendthrift who ruins them both in little more than two years, follows which trade?

Linen draper he may be, but Moll mocks him as a 'gentleman-tradesman', half shopkeeper and half fine gentleman, and she admits she walked into the trap herself.

To which country does Moll Flanders's second husband flee from his creditors, telling her to forget him?

France is his refuge, and his parting advice is that Moll should marry again as if he were dead, which leaves her a wife with no husband.

Hiding from her runaway husband's creditors, Moll Flanders takes lodgings in which Southwark sanctuary for debtors?

The Mint is where she first dresses as a widow and calls herself Mrs. Flanders, the first time the famous surname appears in her story.

Home in England after her colonial marriage collapses, Moll Flanders seeks a new protector in which spa town?

Bath proves a poor hunting ground: Moll remarks that men there sometimes find a mistress but very rarely look for a wife, and she ends up a kept woman.

Which name does Moll Flanders cry out for the Lancashire husband she loves best after he rides away from her?

Jemmy, her pet name for James, later swears he heard her calling him from far down the road, and he turns around and comes back to her.

In which country does Moll Flanders's Lancashire husband claim to own a great estate that proves to be imaginary?

Ireland is where the estate supposedly lies, but the match is a double con: he was told Moll was an heiress, and neither of them has any money.

Which occupation does Moll Flanders's fifth husband follow when she marries him at a roadside inn?

Bank clerk and a sober, honest one, he divorces an unfaithful wife to marry Moll, then dies of despair after losing his money.

Which woman, first hired as Moll Flanders's midwife, later schools her in theft and sells whatever she steals?

Her governess, as Moll always calls her, has such a colourful past that the preface says her life story could fill a volume by itself.

Moll Flanders commits her very first theft by lifting an unwatched bundle in which kind of London shop?

An apothecary's shop in Leadenhall Street is the scene: a maid has her back turned, and Moll, widowed and nearly destitute, walks off with the bundle.

What does Moll Flanders take from a little girl she finds walking home alone from dancing school?

A necklace of beads comes off in a dark alley while Moll pretends to mend the child's shoe, and she tells herself the careless parents deserved the lesson.

During which emergency does Moll Flanders walk into a stranger's home and leave with a bundle of the family's plate?

A fire lets Moll pose as a helpful neighbour's messenger; the frantic mistress hands her two children and the silver, and Moll delivers only the children.

At which rowdy London summer festival does Moll Flanders pick up the tipsy gentleman she later robs in a coach?

Bartholomew Fair is where he approaches her in the cloisters; she empties his pockets while he dozes in the coach, yet he later becomes her lover.

Which disguise does Moll Flanders adopt while working beside a fellow thief who never guesses her secret?

A man is what she passes for on night-time outings, though she admits she was a little too smooth-faced for the part and soon tired of the costume.

Which stolen prize proves so impossible to sell that Moll Flanders has it left at an inn for its owner?

A horse is thrust at her outside a tavern by a servant who is called away; she calmly leads it away, then finds a thief can do nothing with it.

Moll Flanders is finally caught and jailed while carrying which costly goods out of a private house?

Brocaded silk, two pieces valued at £46, puts her on trial; the jury clears her of burglary, but the theft alone is enough for a death sentence.

Which stolen keepsake does Moll Flanders give the grown son who welcomes her warmly in America?

A gold watch is her gift, with a request that he kiss it now and then for her sake; she keeps quiet about having lifted it from a lady in a London meeting-house.

Which word completes the novel's original title, The Fortunes and what of the Famous Moll Flanders?

Misfortunes is the missing word, and the title page goes on to summarise the whole plot in advance, from her birth in jail to her years as a wife, thief and convict.

Which cash crop does Moll Flanders's son promise to send to England from the land her mother left her?

Tobacco from the estate should earn her about £100 a year, her son reckons; Moll notes that in the colony most things were bought with the leaf, not with money.

The first edition of Moll Flanders named no author at all and was presented to readers as which kind of book?

An autobiography 'written from her own memorandums' was the title page's claim; Defoe's name was attached to the book only after his death.

Which Hollywood star played the title role in the 1965 comedy The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders?

Kim Novak fell for her leading man on the job: she and Richard Johnson, who plays Moll's true love, married in March 1965 after filming ended.

Years before writing Moll Flanders, Defoe was sentenced to stand for three days in which public punishment device?

The pillory inspired a legend: Defoe's poem Hymn to the Pillory is said to have moved the crowd to throw flowers at him, though most scholars doubt the story.

Across the bay in which colony do Moll Flanders and her Lancashire husband finally plant their own land?

Maryland was not the plan: the ship they hoped would carry them on to Carolina had already left, so they settled where an honest Quaker found them land.

Which later Defoe novel follows a high-society courtesan who, unlike Moll Flanders, never undergoes a real conversion?

Roxana, subtitled The Fortunate Mistress, was Defoe's final novel, appearing two years after Moll's story.

Which actress played the title role when ITV turned Moll Flanders into a four-part costume serial in 1996?

Alex Kingston led what is counted among the most faithful adaptations of the novel, although the serial ends long before Moll reaches old age.

Which director of the first two James Bond films also made the 1965 romp The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders?

Terence Young stood by the film despite the critics, and complained that fifty-nine cuts were made to it for the American release.

What is the name of the colonial-born son who manages Moll Flanders's inherited land and sends her its income?

Humphrey shares the name with his father, a local woman tells Moll, which is how she realises the two men in front of her are her own son and her former husband.