[1] Following his military service, Imlay sought his fortune in Kentucky (then still part of Virginia) and purchased a tract of land in Fayette County in 1783.
Imlay later tried his hand at fiction, publishing The Emigrants in 1793; both works promoted the American interior and encouraged their settlement by Europeans.
Imlay and Wollstonecraft shared a home in Paris, though business interests took him for extended periods of time to Le Havre, much to the dismay of his "wife."
Despite his promises, Imlay showed no interest in his child's welfare, and left her to the care of Wollstonecraft's husband William Godwin after her mother's death three years later.
He apparently engaged in businesses as varied as furniture and fruit vending, and his name appears, characteristically, in court records for non-payment of incurred debts.