# Is "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe (published anonymously) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (published anonymously) (Printed for, and sold by W. Chetwood, at Cato's-Head in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden; and T. Edling, at the Prince's-Arms over-against Exeter-Change in the Strand, London, 1722) is identified by: First edition, published anonymously — Defoe is nowhere named — on 27 January 1722. London 1722 is the true first; no UK/US or original-language precedence question arises, as Defoe is an English author printed in London and American editions are much later.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, published anonymously — Defoe is nowhere named — on 27 January 1722
- Moore 446
- ESTC T70314
- THE decisive point, and the one the census misses, is the title-page date: the first edition's imprint is a garbled Roman numeral, "MDDCXXI", which is not a valid numeral at all and reads as 1721, although the book was actually published in January 1722
- A title page dated plainly MDCCXXII
- is therefore NOT the first edition
- Publisher imprint reads Printed for, and sold by W. Chetwood, at Cato's-Head in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden; and T. Edling, at the Prince's-Arms over-against Exeter-Change in the Strand, London

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Daniel Defoe (published anonymously) |
| Publisher | Printed for, and sold by W. Chetwood, at Cato's-Head in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden; and T. Edling, at the Prince's-Arms over-against Exeter-Change in the Strand, London |
| Year | 1722 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, published anonymously — Defoe is nowhere named — on 27 January 1722 |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
First edition, published anonymously — Defoe is nowhere named — on 27 January 1722. Moore 446; ESTC T70314. THE decisive point, and the one the census misses, is the title-page date: the first edition's imprint is a garbled Roman numeral, "MDDCXXI", which is not a valid numeral at all and reads as 1721, although the book was actually published in January 1722. A title page dated plainly MDCCXXII (1722) is therefore NOT the first edition. Two further editions followed within 1722 and carry edition statements ("The Second Edition", "The Third Edition") on the title page; the first edition bears no edition statement. The first edition's pagination is reported as distinctive and shared by no other edition. A blank leaf at A8 belongs to the first and is almost always discarded in rebinding, so its presence is a bonus rather than a requirement. This is among the rarest firsts of the enduringly popular 18th-century novels — only two copies are recorded in UK institutional collections (British Library; Trinity College, Cambridge), and it is absent from many major collections.

## Is this the true first?
London 1722 is the true first; no UK/US or original-language precedence question arises, as Defoe is an English author printed in London and American editions are much later. The census's publisher attribution "W. Chetwood and T. Edling" is correct but abbreviated: the imprint names both booksellers with their shop signs and streets, and it is the full imprint together with the garbled date that identifies the book. The census's claim that "the true first has the two-line imprint" is REFUTED — no such point is documented in any source consulted; the documented point is the MDDCXXI date error. The census is otherwise right that three 1722 editions exist and that this is a classic edition-identification trap.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
Book-club editions are not applicable to a 1722 octavo. The real later-issue tells are the second and third editions of 1722, which state their edition on the title page and are correctly dated MDCCXXII; both are commonly mistaken for, or optimistically described as, the first. Moll Flanders has been continuously reprinted since: any copy in publisher's cloth, with an ISBN, or with an editor's introduction (Oxford World's Classics, Penguin, Broadview, Norton) is a modern reprint.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders* by Daniel Defoe (published anonymously) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-fortunes-and-misfortunes-of-the-famous-moll-flanders
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.