Rusk: The Adventures of Gilbert Imlay 15 
evidence of the author’s disregard for the plain truth is the 
fact that this Postscript, which was written at a time when 
he was undoubtedly in Europe, is so worded as to give the 
impression that he was still in Kentucky. 
And if A Topographical Description was not written in 
America, it is hardly likely that The Emigrants, which has 
been hailed as the first novel written in Kentucky, but which 
did not appear until 1793, probably more than six years after 
Imlay had left the United States, was produced in the West. 
More likely, in spite of the declaration of the title-page that 
it was “written in America”, it is based on Imlay’s reminis- 
cences of his two years in Kentucky and upon his reaction to 
British society as he saw it in London — the comparison be- 
tween the two seems to be pretty largely the purpose of the 
book. If, as is likely, the Captain Arl — ton who traveled 
westward thru Pittsburgh and thence by the Ohio to Louis- 
ville to establish himself in the new country is partly remi- 
nis(!ent of the Captain Imlay, who, according to A Topograph- 
ical Description, followed the same route to Kentucky, it is 
also likely that the Mr. II — ray who writes from London tell- 
ing of his voyage down the Mississippi to New Orleans and 
thence to England®^^ is the Imlay who made a voyage from 
America, probably to England, in 1786-1787, and who was, 
within a few years at any rate, deeply involved in the in- 
trigues concerning the possession of the Mississippi and of 
New Orleans. It is, besides, more reasonable to suppose that 
Imlay found less leisure for composition and less urge toward 
it during the two turbulent years on the raw Kentucky fron- 
tier than during the succeeding years under the influence of 
what may well have been a favorable environment. On the 
other hand, the conjecture has been made (independently of 
any such considerations as those I have urged) that Mary 
Wollstonecraft, who, in her preachments on the subject of 
marriage, certainly resembles Imlay, may have influenced the 
social philosophy of his novel.^^ The likelihood of this influ- 
ence is very considerably lessened, however, by the fact that 
such liberal philosophy was in the atmosphere of the French 
Revolution — even in England this was the year of Godwin’s 
Political Justice — and there is more than a tinge of liberalism 
■^3 The Emigrants, 1793, I, 158, and II, 123. 
Ill, 95. 
"" G. R. S. Taylor: Mary Wollstonecraft, p. 137. 
