Moll Flanders
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40 free Moll Flanders trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, first published in 1722, is one of the earliest great English novels and still one of the liveliest. Its narrator is born with nothing, and she talks, marries, schemes and steals her way through seventeenth-century England and America, telling it all in her own unapologetic voice. This quiz follows her story from start to finish: the childhood that shapes her ambitions, the husbands and the lies that come with them, the years as a careful London thief, the trial that nearly ends everything, and the unexpected second act that follows. A few questions step outside the book to cover Defoe's own eventful life and the film and television versions of the novel. It is pitched for students revising the novel, book clubs and anyone who has just finished reading it. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will pick up the details you missed along the way.
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Q 01In Defoe's novel, Moll Flanders is born inside which notorious London prison while her mother awaits punishment?
Newgate
Newgate was a jail Defoe knew from the inside: he was held there himself in 1703 over a satirical pamphlet about religious Dissenters.
Q 02Defoe published Moll Flanders three years after which castaway novel had made him a famous author?
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe ran through four editions before the end of 1719, a late triumph for a writer who was already in his late fifties.
Q 03In the American colonies, Moll Flanders discovers that her third husband is actually which close relative?
Her brother
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.
Q 04By which old legal custom does Moll Flanders's condemned mother win a delay to her hanging?
Pleading her belly
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.
Q 05Which British actor played Moll's Lancashire husband in the 1996 ITV serial of Moll Flanders scripted by Andrew Davies?
Daniel Craig
Daniel Craig played the charming fortune-hunter a full decade before he first appeared as James Bond in Casino Royale.
Q 06Which actor plays Hibble, the servant who reads Moll's memoirs to her daughter, in the 1996 film Moll Flanders?
Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman accepted a modest salary because he liked the script, which keeps little of the novel beyond its heroine's name.
Q 07After a minister petitions for her, Moll Flanders's death sentence is reduced to which other punishment?
Transportation
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.
Q 08Which criminal trade does Moll Flanders's beloved Lancashire husband follow before the pair meet again in jail?
Highwayman
Highwayman was his calling both before and after he met her; the morning after her next wedding, Moll spots him fleeing a coach robbery.
Q 09To which American colony does Moll Flanders sail with her plantation-owning third husband to meet his mother?
Virginia
Virginia is named on the novel's long title page, and Moll sails home to England alone once the marriage breaks down.
Q 10Which literary label, borrowed from Spanish rogue tales, do critics attach to Defoe's episodic novel Moll Flanders?
Picaresque
Picaresque novels follow a quick-witted rogue through loosely linked adventures, and Moll's hops between husbands, cons and thefts fit the pattern.
Q 11Which band of wanderers does Moll Flanders recall travelling with as a tiny child before a parish takes her in?
Gypsies
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.
Q 12In which Essex town is the orphaned Moll Flanders raised by a poor nurse who keeps a little school?
Colchester
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.
Q 13As a small girl, Moll Flanders makes the town ladies laugh by insisting she will grow up to be what?
A gentlewoman
Q 21Which occupation does Moll Flanders's fifth husband follow when she marries him at a roadside inn?
Bank clerk
Bank clerk and a sober, honest one, he divorces an unfaithful wife to marry Moll, then dies of despair after losing his money.
Q 22Which woman, first hired as Moll Flanders's midwife, later schools her in theft and sells whatever she steals?
Her governess
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.
Q 23Moll Flanders commits her very first theft by lifting an unwatched bundle in which kind of London shop?
An apothecary's
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.
Q 14By which name is the teenage Moll Flanders known in the wealthy household where both sons of the family pursue her?
Mrs. Betty
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.
Q 15Moll Flanders's second husband, a spendthrift who ruins them both in little more than two years, follows which trade?
Linen draper
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.
Q 16To which country does Moll Flanders's second husband flee from his creditors, telling her to forget him?
France
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.
Q 17Hiding from her runaway husband's creditors, Moll Flanders takes lodgings in which Southwark sanctuary for debtors?
The Mint
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.
Q 18Home in England after her colonial marriage collapses, Moll Flanders seeks a new protector in which spa town?
Bath
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.
Q 19Which name does Moll Flanders cry out for the Lancashire husband she loves best after he rides away from her?
Jemmy
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.
Q 20In which country does Moll Flanders's Lancashire husband claim to own a great estate that proves to be imaginary?
Ireland
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.
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.
Q 24What does Moll Flanders take from a little girl she finds walking home alone from dancing school?
A necklace
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.
Q 25During which emergency does Moll Flanders walk into a stranger's home and leave with a bundle of the family's plate?
A fire
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.
Q 26At which rowdy London summer festival does Moll Flanders pick up the tipsy gentleman she later robs in a coach?
Bartholomew Fair
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.
Q 27Which disguise does Moll Flanders adopt while working beside a fellow thief who never guesses her secret?
A man
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.
Q 28Which stolen prize proves so impossible to sell that Moll Flanders has it left at an inn for its owner?
A horse
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.
Q 29Moll Flanders is finally caught and jailed while carrying which costly goods out of a private house?
Brocaded silk
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.
Q 30Which stolen keepsake does Moll Flanders give the grown son who welcomes her warmly in America?
A gold watch
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.