Blog

• New Publication: ‘Chathill Station’, in Archipelago (1/27/2023) - Pamela Clemit has published an essay, ‘Chathill Station’, in Andrew McNeillie’s eco-literature magazine Archipelago, 2.2 (Spring 2023), pp. 152-61. The essay is a recollection of her early childhood years as a stationmaster’s daughter, and an elegy for a way of life that disappeared with the restructuring and privatisation of British Rail towards the end of …
• New Publication: ‘Reloading the British Romantic Canon: The Historical Editing of Literary Texts’ (1/3/2023) - An essay by Pamela Clemit, ‘Reloading the British Romantic Canon: The Historical Editing of Literary Texts’, has just been published in the Cambridge University Press volume, History in the Humanities and Social Sciences, edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (pp. 306-28). The essay analyzes the historical recovery of Romantic-era literary texts through scholarly editing, …
• New Post: Walking with the Romantics in the Idler (6/22/2021) - This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in the Idler, No. 48 (February 2016), 58-61: Freedom of the Road: Walking with the Romantics Travelling on foot had a subversive edge in the age of the French Revolution. The educated classes aspired to the slow life and took to the road. They wanted to step off the social ladder, …
• Featured Publication: New Approaches to William Godwin (5/7/2021) - Eliza O’Brien, Helen Stark, and Beatrice Turner have edited a collection of essays, New Approaches to William Godwin: Forms, Fears, Futures, which has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan (2021). The volume comprises eleven chapters, with an introduction by the editors, and explores texts from across the whole of Godwin’s career. Thanks to Eliza, Helen, and …
• New Post: Letters of the Romantics in the Idler (4/27/2021) - This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in the Idler, No. 71 (Mar.-Apr. 2020), 81-4: Quilling Me Softly: Letters of the Romantics On 14 May 1800, William Wordsworth and his brother John set off to walk from Grasmere, in the Lake District, to Gallow Hill, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. Their sister Dorothy began a …
• Interview: QMUL IHSS ‘Five Questions’ with Pamela Clemit (10/23/2020) - A conversation between Pamela Clemit and Simon Reid-Henry, Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, took place in September 2020, as part of the IHSS online ‘Five Questions’ series. It may be read in full below. Topics discussed include William Godwin and his magnum opus, Political Justice …
• New Post: Revisiting Five ODNB Lives from Godwin’s Circle (6/19/2020) - The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is working with The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), to bring new information about Godwin and his correspondence networks to a wider readership. To read more about the project, click here. Three new ODNB lives arising from this collaboration have been …
• New Publication: Four Holograph Letters from Charlotte Smith to James Edward Smith (5/19/2020) - An essay co-authored by Pamela Clemit and Brad Scott, ‘Botanical Networking: Four Holograph Letters from Charlotte Smith to James Edward Smith’, has just been published in Romanticism, 26.1 (2020), 1-12. The essay publishes the texts of four manuscript letters from the poet and novelist Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) to the botanist James Edward Smith (1759-1828), who …
• New Post: William Godwin’s Juvenile Library in the Idler (10/8/2019) - This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in the Idler, No. 66 (May-June 2019), 73-7: Anarchy in the Nursery: William Godwin’s Juvenile Library William Godwin (1756-1836) is known for his anarchist magnum opus An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), a guide to alternative living which still resonates today. He had a second life, less …
• Featured Publication: European Romantic Review: New Directions in Godwin Studies (9/10/2019) - William D. Brewer has guest-edited a William Godwin cluster issue of European Romantic Review, 30: 4 (Aug. 2019). It contains four essays pursuing new directions in Godwin studies, with an introduction by the editor. Thanks to William for providing this summary of the contents: This cluster issue of European Romantic Review is inspired by recent …
• Guest Post: Timothy Whelan, Mary Hays: A Dissenting Life (11/27/2018) - On 8 January 1796, Mary Hays (1759-1843) invited her friends Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin to tea at her London lodgings, bringing together two radical intellectuals who would become Britain’s most famous literary parents. Their daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later, Shelley) was born in the following year. Mary Hays’s contributions to English literary history went …
• New Publication: ‘Letters and Journals’, in The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism (10/2/2018) - An essay by Pamela Clemit, ‘Letters and Journals’, has just been published in The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, edited by David Duff (pp. 418-33). The essay includes discussion of writings by Claire Clairmont, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Godwin, John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, and others. Romanticism was …
• ‘A serjeant of militia!’ Martin Smart, a Correspondent of William Godwin (4/17/2018) - The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is working with The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), to bring new information about Godwin and his correspondence networks to a wider readership. To read more about the project, click here. The second ODNB entry arising from this collaboration has now been published. The …
• New Post: Thomas Love Peacock in the Idler (1/23/2018) - This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in the Idler, No. 57 (Nov.-Dec. 2017), 73-7: Wine, Love and Song: Thomas Love Peacock Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was the original idler. He worked for thirty-seven years at the East India Company, and wrote about his daily routine: From ten to eleven, ate a breakfast for …
• Digitising Godwin’s Manuscripts (3): The V&A’s Literary Manuscripts (1/16/2018) - Images of the manuscripts of Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams are now available to view on The Shelley-Godwin Archive, together with descriptive and contextual commentary. This is the fruit of a collaborative project led by Pamela Clemit, which brought together complementary expertise from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the Victoria and Albert Museum …
• Digitising Godwin’s Manuscripts (2): The Participatory Turn (1/12/2018) - Images of the manuscripts of Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams are now available to view on The Shelley-Godwin Archive, together with descriptive and contextual commentary. This is the fruit of a collaborative project led by Pamela Clemit, which brought together complementary expertise from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the Victoria and Albert Museum …
• Digitising Godwin’s Manuscripts (1): Writing Two Masterpieces (1/9/2018) - Images of the manuscripts of Godwin’s Political Justice and Caleb Williams are now available to view on The Shelley-Godwin Archive, together with descriptive and contextual commentary. This is the fruit of a collaborative project led by Pamela Clemit, which brought together complementary expertise from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the Victoria and Albert Museum …
• New Post: Mary Wollstonecraft in the Idler (9/10/2017) - This piece by Pamela Clemit was first published in the Idler, No. 54 (May-June 2017), 83-9: Quite Contrary: Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) thought that a woman’s place was in the resistance. Her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), anticipated most of the ideas of modern feminism. Revolutionary thinker, Romantic traveller, citizen …
• Announcement: Digitising William Godwin’s Manuscripts (4/4/2017) - Pamela Clemit is leading a new project to digitise the manuscripts of William Godwin’s two most celebrated works. From the press release (London, 3 April 2017): For the first time, the sole surviving manuscripts of the most celebrated works of William Godwin (1756-1836) will be digitised and made freely available on the Shelley-Godwin Archive as …
• Important Update: MLA 2017 Special Session on Godwin and Shelley (12/6/2016) - A Special Session to be held at the 2017 MLA Annual Convention (Philadelphia, 5-8 January) on Thursday 5 January, 1:45-3:00 p.m., 104B, Pennsylvania Convention Center Owing to the sad demise on 20 November 2016 of our colleague, the distinguished and much loved scholar Charles E. Robinson, this Special Session will now be made up of the first two …
• Keats-Shelley Association Events at MLA 2017 (10/28/2016) - Sonia Hofkosh, a Director of the Keats-Shelley Association of America, posted the following news item on the NASSR listserv on 27 October 2016: Dear Romanticist Colleagues and Friends, I write with news about the Keats-Shelley Association events at MLA in Philadelphia, including the KSAA panel (organized by Susan Wolfson as part of the Romantic Bicentennials …
• Announcement: MLA 2017 Special Session on Godwin, Shelley, and Hazlitt (7/29/2016) - A Special Session to be held at the 2017 MLA Annual Convention (Philadelphia, 5-8 January) on Thursday 5 January, 1:45-3:00 p.m., 104B, Pennsylvania Convention Center. Reloading the Romantic Canon: New Texts and Contexts from Godwin, Shelley, and Hazlitt Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, the canon of British Romantic authors installed by the …
• New Post: Rachel Prescott, a Manchester Correspondent of William Godwin (5/27/2016) - The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is working with The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), to bring new information about Godwin and his correspondence networks to a wider readership. To read more about the project, click here. The first ODNB entry arising from this collaboration has now been published. The ODNB …
• Guest Post: John Bugg, ‘The Generosity of Joseph Johnson’ (4/19/2016) - Joseph Johnson’s bookshop at 72 St Paul’s Churchyard, London, served as a hub for some of the most important writers and artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. William Godwin’s diary records his attendance at Johnson’s monthly dinners from the mid-1790s to around 1810. (The tradition was continued, after Johnson’s death in 1809, by his great-nephew …
• Featured Event: ‘Revisiting the Juvenile Library’, BSECS 2016 (1/8/2016) - A panel entitled ‘Revisiting the Juvenile Library: William Godwin, Mary Jane Godwin, and Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature’ was held on 7 January 2016 at the 45th Annual Conference of BSECS. It concentrated on the writing and publishing activities of the Juvenile Library, run by William Godwin and his second wife Mary Jane from 1805 to 1825, …
• Online Publication: ‘Revisiting William Godwin’ (1/5/2016) - An essay by Pamela Clemit, ‘Revisiting William Godwin’, has just been published on Oxford Handbooks Online. Since the 1970s, when paperback editions of Political Justice and Caleb Williams became available, Godwin has been approached in various ways: as a literary writer, a guru, and a serious philosophical thinker. Broadly speaking, these perspectives were united by …
• Featured Publication: A New Edition of William Godwin’s Mandeville (12/1/2015) - William Godwin’s Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century was  published 198 years ago today. The first paperback edition is now available from Broadview Press, edited by Tilottama Rajan, Canada Research Chair and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Western Ontario. The edition (500 pages) includes a wealth of historical and contextual materials, together …
• Guest Post: Ann Farrant, ‘The Different Faces of Amelia Opie’ (10/16/2015) - Amelia Opie, née Alderson (1769-1853), the Norwich-born novelist and poet, is probably best known for her friendships with William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. But her creative milieu included many other writers, as well as thespians, musicians, politicians, judges, and artists. In 1798 Amelia married the portrait artist John Opie (1761-1807), who painted nine portraits of his attractive wife. One …
• Review: Kenneth R. Johnston on The Letters of William Godwin (8/28/2015) - Kenneth R. Johnston is the author of, most recently, the acclaimed monograph, Unusual Suspects: Pitt’s Reign of Alarm and the Lost Generation of the 1790s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). His review-essay on The Letters of William Godwin: Volume II, ed. Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) has just been published in Review 19. If the first volume of Pamela …
• Online Publication: ‘Godwin’s Citations, 1783-2005’ (8/25/2015) - An essay by Pamela Clemit and Avner Offer, ‘Godwin’s Citations, 1783-2005: Highest Renown at the Pinnacle of Disfavor’, published in Nineteenth-Century Prose (41: 1/2, Spring/Fall 2014), 27-52, is now available online. Most scholars agree that Godwin enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in the 1790s, but sank into obscurity after 1800. Analysis of Godwin’s citations allows for a more …
• The Idler Godwin Project: Walking with the Romantics (7/28/2015) - Across 2015, The Idler is publishing extracts from the first two volumes of The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. in progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), together with short pieces on his anarchistic philosophy and its relevance to our own times. Pamela Clemit continues the series with a post on walking with …
• Featured Event: ‘Instruction and Communication in the Godwin Circle’, BSECS PG/ECR Conference 2015 (7/24/2015) - A panel entitled ‘ “The Collision of Mind with Mind”: Instruction and Communication in the Godwin Circle’ was held on 15 July 2015 at the annual BSECS Postgraduate and Early Career Scholars’ Conference, Queen’s University Belfast and Armagh Public Library. The speakers and topics were: John-Erik Hansson, European University Institute, ‘The Domestic Republic? The Tutor-Child …
• New Publication: ‘William Godwin’s Visit to Ireland, 1800’ (7/3/2015) - Pamela Clemit and Jenny McAuley have published a co-authored essay, ‘ “A nation in its last moments”: William Godwin’s Visit to Ireland, 1800,’ in History Ireland, 23: 4 (July/Aug. 2015). The article draws on the letters written by Godwin to his friends James Marshall and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They provide an eyewitness account of aspects of Irish …
• Online Publication: The Letters of William Godwin on OSEO (6/16/2015) - Both Volume I (1778-1797) and Volume II (1798-1805) of The Letters of William Godwin, ed. Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-) are now available in searchable format on Oxford Scholarly Editions Online. This is a subscription database accessible via most university libraries. Please encourage your librarian to subscribe if you are unable to access …
• Blog Post: Coleridge and Godwin: A Literary Friendship (5/19/2015) - Pamela Clemit has published a piece on Coleridge and Godwin on the Wordsworth Trust Blog. It explores their friendship from the winter of 1799 onwards, and draws on their correspondence, marginalia, and manuscript notes. Godwin declared: ‘I feel myself a purer, a simpler, a more unreserved & natural being in your company than in that of almost …
• The Idler Godwin Project: On Conversation (4/10/2015) - Across 2015, The Idler is publishing extracts from the first two volumes of The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. in progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), together with short pieces on his anarchistic philosophy and its relevance to our own times. Pamela Clemit continues the series with a piece on William Godwin and the …
• Review: The Idler on The Letters of William Godwin (4/3/2015) - Tom Hodgkinson has published the first review covering both Volumes I and II of The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. in progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-). In addition to the insights the volumes bring to Godwin’s life and works, Hodgkinson reports that the letters are full of ‘fascinating details about 18th and …
• Announcement: The Letters of William Godwin and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (3/31/2015) - The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is working with The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-), to bring new information about Godwin and his correspondence networks to a wider readership. Two of the six volumes of The Letters of William Godwin have now been published. Already the edition has expanded Godwin’s circle, …
• The Idler Godwin Project: The ‘Leisure of a Cultivated Understanding’ (3/3/2015) - Happy birthday, William Godwin – 259 years old today! On this day, 3 March 2015, The Idler launches The Godwin Project, inspired by The Letters of William Godwin, edited by Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. in progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011-). Across 2015, The Idler will be publishing extracts from the letters, as edited by Clemit, occasional extracts from Godwin’s …
• Featured Publication: Nineteenth-Century Prose Special Issue on William Godwin (1/27/2015) - Rowland Weston, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Waikato, has guest-edited a special double issue of Nineteenth-Century Prose (41: 1/2, Spring/Fall 2014). The volume devotes 424 pages to new Godwin scholarship, and includes a stimulating and provocative introduction by the editor. Thanks to Rowland for providing this summary of the volume’s contents: This special issue …
• Featured Event: ‘William Godwin’s Middle Years’, BSECS 2015 (1/20/2015) - A panel entitled ‘William Godwin’s Middle Years (1785-1805): New Letters, New Directions, New Critical Perspectives’ was held on 7 January 2015 at the 44th Annual Conference of BSECS. It highlighted the variety of critical work made possible by the recent publication of The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798-1805. The speakers and topics were: Amy Garnai, …
• Podcast: Launch of The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798-1805 (1/2/2015) - The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798-1805 was published in 2014. The launch was celebrated by a colloquium at Wolfson College, Oxford, on 18th November. The event was co-sponsored by OUP and the TORCH Enlightenment Correspondences Network. Listen to the podcast below, or download it here. The four talks (10-15 minutes each) highlight the breadth and …
• New Publication: The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798-1805 (12/17/2014) - Public intellectual, political radical, author: William Godwin was one of the most significant thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His philosophical anarchism continues to engage and inspire political activists and scholars. Volume II of his letters, edited by Pamela Clemit, was published by Oxford University Press on 13 November 2014. It sheds …
• Featured edition (II): Letters of William Godwin – Pamela Clemit – OUP (12/10/2014) - Originally posted on What is a letter?:
  The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798–1805, expertly edited by Pamela Clemit (Durham), was published on 13 November 2014 by Oxford University Press. According to the publisher’s description, ‘The first volume of William Godwin’s letters reflected the origins and impact of his great philosophical work, An Enquiry…
• William Godwin’s Wet-Transfer Copies and James Watt’s Copying Machine (6/24/2014) - Originally posted on Object Archives: For the literary historian, archives may be said to represent the ultimate source of authority concerning a writer’s private and creative life. Yet archival research often raises as many questions as it answers. The fragmentary, inscrutable nature of some manuscript evidence highlights the inherent fragility and unpredictability of archives. Among …
• Featured edition: Letters of William Godwin – Pamela Clemit – OUP (6/8/2014) - Originally posted on What is a letter?: Despite the more recent and rising popularity of digital editions, ‘old-fashioned’ scholarly editions of letter collections remain indispensable. The Letters of William Godwin, General Editor Pamela Clemit, 6 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011–), is such an edition. It ‘publishes for the first time all the letters of …
• Podcast: Objects of Value: The Afterlives of Letters (4/28/2014) - Originally posted on READ | Research English at Durham: A podcast featuring Professor Pamela Clemit is now available to download via the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing; the podcast was recorded at the centre’s Lives of Objects conference, held at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 20-22 September 2013. As part of a panel on “Archives,” Professor Clemit explores the material culture of …
• Ipad App Brings the Shelley Circle to Life (8/6/2012) - Originally posted on READ | Research English at Durham: A free Ipad app and website developed by the New York Public Library showcase the hidden archives of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and her circle. In one section, “Outsiders,” Professor Pamela Clemit examines a letter written by Mary Shelley’s father, the anarchist philosopher William Godwin. The NYPL’s award-winning …
• New Publication: Letters of William Godwin Cast Light on the Eighteenth Century (4/3/2012) - Originally posted on READ: Research in English At Durham:
  The first volume of a six-book project to transcribe and edit the letters of William Godwin has recently been published. Edited by Professor Pamela Clemit, The Letters of William Godwin Volume 1: 1778-1797 casts new light on the literary relationships of one of the most influential writers…