Is the language in "Moll Flanders" true to the way they talked and wrote during the 1720s in England, or did Daniel Dafoe make it up to give another appearance? He writes in the preface that
"...particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modister words than she told it first; the copy which came first to hand having been written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.
The pen employ'd in finishing her story..."
It would appear from this passage that the language is as one did use. Is it?
Also, were single words, such as "raped" for rapped, "cloaths" for clothes, "surprized", and many others. He also substituted the letter "e" with an apostrophe frequently (at almost every occurrence in the text). Were these frequently done in the written word?
Finally, were single sentences long and convoluted as in:
"I pleaded that I had stole nothing, they had lost nothing; that the door was open, and I went in with design to buy; if, seeing no body in the house, I had taken any of them up in my hand, it could not be concluded that I intended to steal them, for that I never carried them farther than the door to look on them with the better light."
Was this common?
I know that the English language was different back then. But was it this different?
