Gilbert Imlay:
Citizen of the World
978 1 85196 859 6: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
This is the first book-length biography of the American Gilbert Imlay (c.1754–c.1828), Revolutionary War veteran, land-jobber, travel-writer, novelist, entrepreneur, agent provocateur – and infamous lover of Mary Wollstonecraft. The book concerns an Imlay little known to those working in Romantic Studies, so includes a reconstruction of Imlay’s early life in New Jersey; an account of his activities as a land speculator; the intriguing relations he had with a spate of historical characters; and his involvement with the Girondist government’s plans to launch a revolt in the Western Territory against the United States to destabilize Spanish rule in Louisiana. Previously undocumented details of Imlay’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade are also included.
Though his life provides a fascinating biography in its own right, the book highlights how Imlay unwittingly acted as an intermediary between figures of greater significance, whose diverse ideas, ambitions and schemes he frequently borrowed and disseminated across the Atlantic and across continents, whilst invariably serving his own interests.
Much of the text is based on original documentary sources (including Imlay’s largely unknown letters), gathered from a variety of rare book and manuscript collections. It will be of interest to scholars of Romanticism, politics, biography and book history.
Sample pages
Readership
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Romanticism, American Studies
Contents
Part I: America
Chapter 1: Coming of Age in New Jersey
This chapter deals with the history and settlement of the Imlay family in New Jersey; Imlay’s education and early brushes with the law; his service in and resignation from the Revolutionary Army; and the build-up of the Kentucky Land Bubble following the end of hostilities between Britain and her colonies. Much of this chapter is based on new material from various archives and collections in New Jersey.
Chapter 2: The Kentucky Land Bubble
This chapter presents the fullest account to date of Imlay’s land-jobbing adventures in the Kentucky District and of the legal entanglements that ensued from them, largely based on documents that have only recently come to light.
Chapter 3: Friends in High Places
This chapter traces the personal and business relations – traditionally ignored by biographers – between Imlay and such better-known American friends and comrades as James Wilkinson, Daniel Boone, John Filson, George Rogers Clark, Benjamin Sebastian, and Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee.
Chapter 4: Diversifying Business: The Triangular Trade
This chapter reveals the unsavory details of Imlay’s – hitherto undocumented – venture into the transatlantic slave trade.
Part II: England
Chapter 5: “Not to captivate but to inform”: The Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America
This chapter deals with Imlay’s geopolitics, and analyzes how The Topographical Description reformulated an earlier tradition of topography/travel writing into an ideological discourse of space. The chapter also traces the print history of The Topographical Description and its impact on writers, readers, politicians, and the radical emigration movement in Britain in the 1790s.
Chapter 6: “Come to these Arcadian regions, where there is room for millions”: The Emigrants
This chapter analyzes the ideological agenda of Imlay’s Jacobin novel, and discusses the sympathizers and critics, imitators and detractors that the novel spawned in the Jacobin and anti-Jacobin print culture of the 1790s.
Part III: France
Chapter 7: “A whirl of projects and schemes”; Or, All Is Fair in Love and Trade
This chapter reconstructs the mercantile activities of Imlay in Europe, as well as the concomitant dissolution of his relationship with Wollstonecraft. It includes a reconstruction of the Paris network of American expatriates, and of Imlay’s Scandinavian trade.
Chapter 8: Citizen Imlay and the Conspiracy against the US
This chapter describes Imlay’s brief but eventful career on the international political stage, notably his involvement in the Girondist plan to oust the Spanish from Louisiana, and to entangle the United States into a war with Spain. It re-examines the Girondist plot from both sides of the Atlantic, focusing as much on the activities and intrigues of Citizen Genet, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Sebastian and the Generals James Wilkinson and George Rogers Clark, as on events in Paris.
Part IV: Conclusion
Chapter 9: Imlay’s After-Life
Although some information has come to light in recent years about the last two decades of Imlay’s life, the final chapter of the man’s biography can only be speculative in the absence of any substantial source material. However, the trails he left in Britain’s print culture makes up for the lack of hard facts. This chapter traces Imlay’s literary after-life through the history of criticism of the Romantic Age and beyond.
Reviews
'[Verhoeven's] ten year's archival research...add substantially to our picture of Imlay, despite the paucity of data.'
– Lucasta Miller, The Times Literary Supplement
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