Description: Published in 1793, The Emigrants was one of the first novels to contrast the rigid political structure and social "depravity" of Europe with the promise of America as a liberal, socially just utopia. Set on the western frontier of the new nation, this epistolary novel deftly combines a love story with rich descriptions of the landscape and of wilderness adventures, including one of the first instances of Indian captivity in American fiction. Gilbert Imlay is widely known as Mary Wollstonecraft's reprobate lover and The Emigrants echoes so many of Wollstonecraft's views on social reform, the rights of women, and the need for liberal divorce laws that some critics have attributed the novel to her. In their lively introduction, Gilroy and Verhoeven persuasively argue in favor of Imlay's authorship.

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