ABSTRACT
An Irishman reputedly of great charm, Archibald Hamilton Rowan held political views which were undeniably radical. In 1792, he was arrested on an unfounded charge of distributing a seditious pamphlet. Imprisoned at Dublin, he managed to escape to France and was living in Paris at the time when he met Mary Wollstonecraft. Rowan’s short and factual account adds little to what Godwin had already written in Memoirs. It does tell us, however, that her connection with Imlay was accepted by the expatriate community as a ‘republican marriage’. Of greater interest is the letter to his wife, which gives a rare glimpse of Wollstonecraft as she appeared to those who knew her in person. His reaction on discovering her identity verges on the comic. Clearly, he takes her for an unmarried mother, and is more than ready to chuckle inwardly at finding her saddled with a child which she is brazenly displaying in public.
