The Bomb Book

It is an universall and Fixed law that should a reader take up any of the works of Master De Foe she shall be obbliged to begin forthwith to write and may I say even to think in the manner of Master De Foe; for it is like a virulent infecktion; which will, it may be seen redilly, be habituated in exentrick spellings, irregular Capitilizations, alarming and unexplainable lunges into the italick; and headlong sentense construction, and the Devil take the hindmost. Mistress Moll Flanderses tale self told came off but three Yeares from the romaunce of Robinson Crusoe that was cast away on the Island in the Oroonoquoo. This Dan Foe, for such indeed was his original name, was a scribbler for the news presses and a great stirrer of pothers for the Politick Parties and so twas nothing astonishing that he got himself into Newgate a time or two and also had a spell in the Stocks; and he dabbled in Matters of Business with more gusto than wise discrimination, and of a like twas no great surprize that he finds himself Publickly Bankrupted; and so finding he can turn out tales at speed, and that the Printers are at need of a very fluid pen, he puts forth eight long tales in FIVE YEARS and him a man of SIXTY years. In those dayes of Queen Anne and King George THE FIRST this style of tale telling was new, there was hardly an one before Crusoe, and so it was called novel, meaning, a NEW THING.

So, to come now to Mistress Moll, it was no meer nothing that an entertainment should be found in the detailled moral conundrums that this woman was got into at so many times, and what she herself made of them, and how she justifyed them, and so forth. Each twist of FATE is to be chewed over mightily for page upon page until Mistress Moll's jaws may shurely have begun twingeing. Ponder ponder ponder, so goes she. And then : ponder ponder ponder. But on occasion Moll will come forth with such a line as this

It is but here and there that a Man is to be Found who is fit for a Woman to Venture upon.

In regards to the NOVEL may we say this, I wonder. That by the time the 4th or 5th child has begun walking and talking it is not such a Phenomenon - indeed, may you look back and shake your Head at the great wonder you did make of the first that did so.