In one of the most curious cameo roles in early American literature, Royall Tyler includes an encounter with Thomas Paine in his 1797 novel, The Algerine Captive. Updike Underhill, the hero of Tyler's bizarre but fascinating text, first meets Benjamin Franklin and then Thomas Paine during his travels in London. Given his strong Federalist politics, Tyler's representation of Paine is, not surprisingly, unflattering. However, Paine's inclusion reflects the extent to which he was still a voice to be reckoned with. Indeed, in the 1790s Paine was one of the most recognizable characters in the West, well known in the United States, Great Britain, and France. At the height of his fame in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Paine was frequently satirized by James Gillray and other cartoonists of the age for whom he served as a symbol of the twin evils of republican ideology and rational religion. Tyler disdains almost everything about Paine. When Underhill first meets Paine he is introduced as “the most singular curiosity, I saw in London,” who is the author of several texts “whose tendency is to overturn ancient opinions of government and religion” (87). The strategy of Tyler's account of Paine, already evident in these passages, is to marvel at Paine's celebrity and, at the same time, wonder about its legitimacy.