'This deeply researched, richly contextual study is essential reading not just for scholars of the Godwin-Wollstonecraft circle, but for all those interested in the revolutionary upheavals of the late eighteenth century.' Keats-Shelley Journal 'His [Imlay's] reverberating story as retold through Verhoeven's pioneering scholarship will be of interest to Romanticists, historians of early American history and scholars of eighteenth-century English and American literature and women's studies.' Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net 'Overall, Verhoeven's biography is a methodically researched and fluidly written account of Imlay's life.' Journal of the Early Republic 'The author is especially adept at weaving complex empirical reconstruction of mundane circumstances with narrative and with the incisive analysis of thick textual materials.' The William and Mary Quarterly '[Verhoeven's] ten year's archival research...add substantially to our picture of Imlay, despite the paucity of data.' Times Literary Supplement

• Prologue: The Many Lives of Gilbert Imlay; I: America; 1: War Child and Soldier; 2: Land-Jobber À La Mode; 3: Friends in High Places; 4: Slave Trader; II: England; 5: Authority on the American West; 6: Jacobin Novelist and Defender of the Rights of Woman; III: France; 7: Expat Radical and Conspirator; 8: Purveyor to the French Revolution; 9: Blockade Runner and Infamous Lover; Epilogue: Lost in Speculation