The New Atalantis
novel by Delarivier Manley
The New Atalantis (full title: Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of both Sexes, From The New Atalantis) was an influential political satire by Delarivier Manley published at the start of the 18th century. In it a parallel is drawn between the exploitation of females and the political deception of the public.
The novel satirizes prominent members of the Whig party, targeting in particular John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. It gained support by literary figures who were aligned with the Tories.
Sexualising politics
The New Atalantis appeared in 1709, the first volume in May and the second in October. The novel was initially suppressed on the grounds of its scandalous nature and Manley was arrested and tried, but it was immediately popular and went into seven editions over the following decade. As a political satire on the behaviour of prominent members of the Whig party, it won the approval of the Tory literary faction, among them Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Richard Steele and Jonathan Swift. There is also a reference to its enduring popularity in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock (Canto III.165).
In the immediate background, and influencing the choice of title, was Sir Francis Bacon's novel New Atlantis (1627). In contrast to its altruistic utopianism, Manley reveals a hypocritical dystopia.
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This entry incorporates text from “The New Atalantis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.