Although Delarivier Manley was born to the Lieutenant Governor and Commander of all His Majesty's castles, forts and forces within the Isle of Jersey, with the appropriate aristocratic connections for a position at court, her hopes to be appointed a maid of honour to Mary of Modena, wife of James II, were thwarted by the Glorious Revolution. Manley went on to be “ruined” by her cousin, John Manley, who seduced her into a bigamous marriage, and with whom she had a son in 1692. For the rest of her life, Manley supported herself by her writing. She began her literary career in 1696, with the publication of Letters Written on a Stage Coach Journey to Exeter and two plays, The Lost Lover, or: The Jealous Husband and The Royal Mischief. Jonathan Swift sponsored her authorship of Tory pamphlets, and invited her collaboration on the Examiner, of which she became the editor in June, 1711. Although she continued to write intermittently for the stage, she is remembered chiefly for her scandal chronicle, The New Atalantis (1709), in which she put to use as Tory propaganda the episodic romance, modeled after the French courtly roman à clef.

The New Atalantis is a political satire consisting of episodes of sexually scandalous behavior perpetrated by thinly disguised “persons of quality.” Representing political “abuses” as sexual “abuses,” Manley relies on the sexual scandal's being understood as political allegory.