The novel also includes the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia between August–October 1793 as an important plot element.

In return, he helps Wallace whom he had met earlier and who is Susan's fiancé and has yellow fever.

Eventually he summons Dr Stevens to the debtors' prison to tend to Welbeck, who is ill there.

They almost die in freezing weather but are saved by Mr Curling, who takes Eliza in temporarily.

At this point, Mervyn returns to the city to help Clemenza Lodi, whom he had met when she was pregnant by Welbeck.

He meets a young widow in the same house, Achsa Fielding, who had no idea her friends were prostitutes.

Some scholars have argued that Mervyn's character inhabits the grey area between hero and villain, or that he lacks "the force of will to be either".

[2] Emory Elliott, an American academic, describes the new edited novel as providing a "reliable text constructed within the intellectual, cultural, political, and religious context of a society".

[2] The novel has also influenced other American Gothic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, in writing The Masque of the Red Death, published in 1842.