ABSTRACT
Aside from Wil Verhoeven and Amanda Gilroy, very few scholars have analyzed Imlay’s publications, and very few readers know anything about them. This chapter compares Rights of Woman with Imlay’s The Emigrants and gives evidence that Wollstonecraft was a heavy contributor to the writing of the novel, a subject that has eluded most scholarship. Highlighting Wollstonecraft’s “presence” in The Emigrants, Chapter 11 identifies feminist perspectives that could not possibly have originated with Imlay. The research also exposes several lies that Imlay perpetuated in public, thereby helping readers appreciate Wollstonecraft’s despair that led to two suicide attempts—a kind of despair that was not singular to Wollstonecraft but was shared by many women of her age who had very little control over their lives and the lives of their children.
