Imaginary Friendship is the first in-depth study of the onset of the American Revolution through the prism of friendship, focusing on future US president John Adams and leading Loyalist Jonathan Sewall. The book is part biography, revealing how they shaped each other’s progress, and part political history, exploring their intriguing dangerous quest to clean up colonial politics. Literary history examines the personal dimension of discourse, resolving how Adams’s presumption of Sewall’s authorship of the Loyalist tracts Massachusettensis influenced his own magnum opus, Novanglus. The mystery is not why Adams presumed Sewall was his adversary in 1775 but why he was impelled to answer him.
- ISBN10 0367664356
- ISBN13 9780367664350
- Publish Date 30 September 2020 (first published 30 November 2018)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Imprint Routledge
- Format Paperback
- Pages 224
- Language English