Ten top books on 18th-century London's perils

Maria McCann's first novel, As Meat Loves Salt, was published in 2000 to huge acclaim. Her new novel, Ace, King, Knave, is set in Georgian London.

For the Guardian, McCann came up with a top ten list of books on 18th-century London's perils, including:

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1722)

Despite her repentance in old age, the magnificent Moll is nobody's idea of a virtuous heroine as she rattles through her tale of life on the edge. Defoe was a champion of female education; Moll's story illustrates how a woman unable to earn her living must seek male protection, first in marriage, then in prostitution. Finally, when she is too faded to find customers, Moll has no resort but crime. The emphasis on hard cash rather than sexual pleasure makes Moll Flanders possibly the most unerotic novel ever written about a prostitute, but it's engaging for all that. Defoe, himself a tradesman, gives his heroine a distinctive voice – and the shrewdness and energy of the born chancer, an energy that remains with the reader when the book is finished.

Read about another book on the list. 

Moll Flanders also appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best highwaymen in literature and ten of the best seductions in literature, and Freya North's top ten list of romantic fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue