This is the first full-length biography of Delarivier Manley (c.1670–1724). A Tory pamphleteer, playwright and satirical historian, Manley was regarded by her contemporaries Jonathan Swift and Robert Harley as a key member of the Tory propaganda team. Her best-selling political scandal chronicle, The New Atalantis (1709), helped to bring down the Whig ministry in 1710. Her reputation was tarnished, however, in subsequent generations and twentieth-century scholars often misread her works as under-developed novels rather than as complex works of political satire.
Carnell argues that Manley's quasi-autobiographical writings Letters Writen by Mrs. Manley (1696) and The Adventures of Rivella (1714) are coyly political self-portraits which must be read in their historical context. She corrects many oft-repeated errors in extant scholarship, and uncovers previously unknown details about Manley's life, including evidence about three illegitimate children by John Tilly, Governor of Fleet Prison.

"'Carnell's research is meticulous ... a highly useful addition to our knowledge about late Restoration and very early eighteenth century political culture.'"