Gilbert Imlay, the first Kentucky novelist, was born in New Jersey,
about 1755. He was captain of a company in the Revolution. The war over,
Imlay turned his face toward the West; and he reached the Falls of the
Ohio--Louisville--in 1784. In the little river town he worked under
George May as a "commissioner for laying out lands in the back
settlements." Imlay had not been a Kentuckian many months before he had
obtained patents for many thousand acres of land--all of which he
subsequently lost. It is not certainly known how long he remained in
Kentucky, but it was about eight years. He went to London in 1792 and,
in that year, the first edition of his _Topographical Description of the
Western Territory of North America_ was published. This work is made up
of a series of descriptive letters which the author wrote from Kentucky
to an English friend. The second edition of 1793, and the third edition
of 1797, reproduced John Filson's _Kentucke_ and Thomas Hutchins's
_History_, together with much new material. While a resident of Kentucky
Gilbert Imlay wrote the first Kentucky novel, entitled _The Emigrants,
or the History of an Expatriated Family, being a Delineation of English
Manners drawn from Real Characters. Written in America, by G. Imlay,
Esq._ (London, 1793, 3 vols.; Dublin, 1794, 1 vol.). The epistolary form
is adopted throughout, and the narrative relates the fortunes of "an
eminent merchant in the city of London," Mr. T----n, who loses his great
fortune and emigrates with his family to America. His daughter, the
beautiful Caroline, is the heroine of the story. Landing in
Philadelphia, they travel to Pittsburgh, and from there drift down the
Ohio river in a Kentucky flatboat, or "ark," to Louisville. Caroline's
lover, Capt Arl----ton, had preceded the family and gone on to
Lexington, but he soon returned to Louisville when he learned that his
sweetheart awaited his coming. "The emigrants" remained in Kentucky some
three months, or from June until August. Caroline's capture by the
Indians in August decided the family to forsake the "dark and bloody
ground," though she was safely rescued. They finally find their way to
London, and all ends well. _The Emigrants_, in the three-volume edition,
is exceedingly scarce, but the Dublin one-volume edition may be
occasionally procured in the rare book shops of London. In 1793 Gilbert
Imlay went to Paris, where he met the famous Mary Wollstonecraft, with
whom he was soon living, as they both held mutual affection equivalent
to marriage. In 1794 a daughter was born to them, Fanny Imlay, who
committed suicide at Swansea, October 10, 1816. In April, 1796, Imlay
and Mary agreed to go separate paths after much stormy weather together;
and a short time later she became the wife of William Godwin, the
English philosopher and novelist. In giving birth to the future wife of
the poet Shelley, she surrendered her own life. Mary Wollstonecraft's _A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ is the chief memorial of her
pathetic and eventful career. After having parted on that April morning
of 1796 with the woman he had so outrageously treated, Gilbert Imlay,
"the handsome scoundrel," is lost to history. When, where, or how he
died is unknown.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _London Monthly Review_ (August, 1793); _Kentuckians
in History and Literature_, by John Wilson Townsend (New York,
1907); _Dictionary of National Biography_; biographies of Shelley,
Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft.