Move over Moll ... here are the OTHER bodice-ripping yarns

It's the bodice-ripping yarn of the year. Moll Flanders, starring Alex Kingston, is ITV's latest rollicking good tale taken from a classic piece of literature. So here's a look at the original Moll and other romping good reads of centuries past and present...

MOLL FLANDERS (Daniel Defoe, 1722)

THE PLOT: A romp through 18th Century life seen through the eyes of a lovable loose woman and all-round crook.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "For two hundred years, Moll Flanders was refused admission to the highest literary company in case her dirty boots soiled some precious carpet".

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "He got up, and, stopping my very breath with kisses, threw me on the bed again; but then went further with me than decency permits me to mention ...Thus I gave myself up to ruin without the least concern..."

BEOWULF (1000 AD)

THE PLOT: A poem with more fights than a Jean-Claude van Damme movie. Our hero Beowulf has to slay a murderous monster called Grendel and his mum - an equally hideous old troll.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "Highly regarded in Anglo-Saxon literary circles."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "He seized the belted hilt...drew the patterned blade; despairing of life, he struck angrily so that it bit her hard on the neck, broke the bone-rings; the sword passed straight through the doomed body. She fell dead on the floor; the sword was bloody; the man rejoiced in his work."

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE, CANTERBURY TALES (Geoffrey Chaucer, 1386)

THE PLOT: A 14th Century road movie, with a motley crew telling tales on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. One character, the Wife of Bath, is a five-times-wed sex maniac.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "Sharply individual."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "Let them be pure wheat loaves of maidenhead/ And let us wives be known for barley-bread/In wifehood I will use my instrument/As freely as my Maker me it sent."

CLARISSA (Samuel Richardson, 1748)

THE PLOT: The world's baddest bad-guy Lovelace is incensed when the saintly Clarissa doesn't fall for his charms. He abducts her and rapes her. She dies of a broken heart.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "Lovers that haunt the imagination as Romeo and Juliet do."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "Thus I was tricked and deluded back by blacker hearts of my own sex, than I thought there were in the world; who appeared to me to be persons of honour: and when in his power, thus barbarously was I treated by this villainous man."

THE ROVER (Aphra Behn, 1677)

THE PLOT: This 17th Century Men Behaving Badly was one of the few plays of the time to be written by a woman.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "She turned to writing after imprisonment for debt."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "Cruel, yes, I will kiss and beat thee all over; kiss and see thee all over; thou shalt lie with me too, not that I care for the Injoyment....I will strip thee stark naked, then hang thee out at my window by the heels."

CORIOLANUS (Shakespeare, 1605)

THE PLOT: One of Shakespeare's bloodiest tales as the hero Caius Marcius dies trying to save Rome.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "His death is a climax and consummation."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "His sword, death's stamp/Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot/He was a thing of blood, whose every motion/ Was tim'd with dying cries."

THE STORY OF O (Pauline Reage, 1969)

THE PLOT: O is the sex slave of a French aristocrat who runs a chateau where the staff are dedicated to his sexual pleasure.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "S&M classic"

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "When they see a girl like you, men know right away that you're made to be flogged. They sense it."

WHITE STAINS (Anais Nin, 1940)

THE PLOT: Nin wrote other erotic fiction...this was written privately for an American oil millionaire.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "Sensual yet explicit short stories"

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "I begin with one hand to undo my clothing. As soon as she sees my purpose, she begins to loosen hers. I leave her now; her adoring eyes follow me as I mix another drink and bring it to her. This is a stiff one, but she drinks it thirstily. Then I draw her to her feet and whisper to her that I want her naked."

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER (D.H. Lawrence, 1928)

THE PLOT: Lady Chatterley is unhappily married to husband Clifford, who is paralysed below the waist. So Mellors the gamekeeper keeps his mistress satisfied.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfilment."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "Her sharp breasts rose and fell, her hair was plastered down with rain, her face was flushed ruddy and her body glistened and trickled."

THE MISFORTUNES OF VIRTUE (Marquis de Sade, 1787)

THE PLOT: Sadism got its name from the twisted writings of the Marquis who delighted in rape and torture.

PUBLISHER'S NOTES: "The name of the Marquis de Sade is synonymous with the blackest corners of the human soul, a byword for all that is foulest in human conduct."

TYPICAL EXTRACT: "His hapless victim had not been killed outright and struggled for some time in her chains. It was a horrid sight and the vile monster feasted his eyes on it with intense delight."

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