Press

What the critics say

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
- Guardian

Lively and bracing...With Rees's companionship, I finally see the point of Moll
- The Times

Rees is adept at describing such real-life individuals whose exploits may have contributed something to the adventures of Defoe's fictional character...an engaging enough companion
- Sunday 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

'Sian Rees brings alive this fictional woman and makes her live and breathe in the teeming London of her birth...Rees has written history at its most accessible: learned, informative and highly entertaining
- Sunday Express

Rees' skill as a masterful researcher and a story teller truly shines...Moll Flanders is merely the peg on which she hangs a thoroughly engrossing study of 17th-century life.
- BBC History Magazine

The myth of Moll and the reality are poles apart, as Sian Rees shows in this vivid look at both the character and the culture that created her.
- Metro

Rees is an assiduous researcher with a perceptive and unflinching eye...Defoe's novel is a compulsive page-turner, and so is this latest work.
- Irish Times

Rees' book rescues Moll from her modern re-invention as a naughty Georgian pin-up and restores her to the 17th century context of Defoe's original tale.
- History Today

Brisk, lucid and packed with colour...If you haven't read the original, this book will surely prove the necessary spur; to Rees's credit, it's also highly enjoyable in its own right.
- The Lady

Rees has a magpie's eye for the details that make history sparkle...The result is a wonderfully entertaining, enlightening book, which in its own way is just as much fun as the original.
- Mail on Sunday

Rees's book raises some interesting questions about the usefulness of novels as historical documents in their own right.
- Times Literary Supplement