They were homeless wanderers, prostitutes, orphans, and factory girls. They hurdled terrible obstacles, reinvented themselves as men, goddesses, witches, and princesses to become legends in their own right as England rose to world power. No other group of people rivaled their inventiveness or their grip on the nation’s imagination. Debbie Lee unfolds the small stories of six women, with a cast of supporting characters such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Benjamin Franklin, Stamford Raffles, and Napoleon, against the grand narrative of England’s eighteenth-century empire building. Romantic Liars: Obscure Women who Became Impostors and Challenged an Empire is a meticulously researched, spellbinding tale of tragedy, transformation and triumph in the age of reason.

Debbie Lee teaches at Washington State University. She is the author of Literature, Exploration, and Science: Bodies of Knowledge (2004) and Slavery and the Romantic Imagination published (2002 and 2004).