Manley became well-known, even notorious, as a novelist with the publication of her roman à clef, the "New Atalantis", in 1709, a work that spotted present British politics on the fabulous Mediterranean Island. Contemporary critics like Swift might consider that her caricatures missed the mark much more often than they hit it; but a historian like G. M. Trevelyan would at least rate her portrait of Godolphin as a telling one: “...the greatest genius of his age with the least of it in his aspect. The affairs of a nation in his head, with a pair of cards or a box of dice in his hand”.