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 Beatrice for providing this summary of the volume’s contents:
This new collection of essays brings together the work of established scholars and early-career researchers across a range of disciplines. The eleven chapters are grouped according to three main themes: forms (the variety of literary modes and genres with which Godwin engaged), fears (political and personal), and futures (fame, legacies, afterlives).
David O’Shaughnessy, in ‘Godwin, Ireland and Historical Tragedy’, reads Godwin’s fragmentary tragedy Abbas, King of Persia (1801) as an allegorical treatment of the relationship between Ireland and Britain at the time of the Act of Union (1801). He considers Abbas alongside other works in which Godwin engaged with Irish affairs: his political journalism of the 1780s; the novel Mandeville; A Tale of the Seventeenth Century in England (1817); and History of the Commonwealth (1824-8). In tracing Godwin’s longstanding interest in Irish history, O’Shaughnessy highlights a neglected but consistent thread in his career.
Grace Harvey, in ‘“My son, once my friend”: Sanguinity, Sincerity and Friendship in St. Leon’s Confessional Narrative’, explores Godwin’s treatment of friendship and paternity in St Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century (1799). She concentrates on Godwin’s depiction of sincerity in the relationship between St Leon and his son Charles. Godwin affirms the necessity of sincerity in friendship by exposing its absence in St Leon’s relationship with Charles. St Leon fails to identify Charles as a friend and equal to whom candour is owed.
John-Erik Hansson, in ‘Through the Looking-Glasses: Godwin’s Biographies for Children’, shows how Godwin challenged the conventions of children’s life-writing by writing biographies for young people that reflected his own political and educational commitments. He considers The Looking Glass (1805) and the Life of Lady Jane Grey (1806), both published under the pseudonym of Theophilus Marcliffe, in relation to Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) and the Life of Chaucer (1803). The children’s biographies exemplify Godwin’s attempt to create a youth culture of radical reform to further the political agendas of his life-writing for adults.
Mark Philp, in ‘Candour, Courage and the Calculation of Consequences in Godwin’s 1790s’, reminds us that Godwin, in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), gives ‘the bastard prudence’ short shrift. He examines the shifts in Godwin’s concepts of candour and courage during the 1790s – partly as a result of writing Caleb Williams (1794), and partly in response to changing political conditions and personal experiences. Godwin’s concern with the intrinsic character of an act gives way to a new emphasis on consequences, and he admits prudence as a motive. The result is a much less optimistic doctrine.
Shawn Fraistat, in ‘Godwin’s Fear of the Private Affections’, re-examines Godwin’s treatment of the private affections across the three editions of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793, 1796, 1798). At first Godwin feared that cohabitation and marriage were vehicles for partiality, dependence, and prejudice, but he later envisaged a more positive role for domestic ties. Fraistat considers why Godwin’s views shifted and how he attempted to re-envisage human relationships in a manner consistent with justice and progress. Godwin’s position remains instructive for theorizing the role the private affections ought to play in a just society.
Ruby Tuke, in ‘Gifts, Giving, Gratitude: The Development of William Godwin’s Radical Critique of Charity in the 1790s’, argues that Godwin’s writings in different genres reveal the tacit strategies that underpin charitable giving. For Godwin, the gratitude of the (poor) recipient maintains a system of inequality. His intersubjective ‘gift theory’ prefigures Pierre Bourdieu’s critical ambivalence towards the gift in the twentieth century. The comprehensive nature of Godwin’s critique threatens to undermine the gift’s effectiveness. This explains why his rejection of gratitude was misinterpreted as support for private vice by conservative critics towards the end of the 1790s.
David Fallon, in ‘Gines, Violence, and Fear in Things as They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams’, investigates the economy of violence in Caleb Williams (1794). He focuses on the thief-taker Gines who hunts Caleb down. The character of Gines is placed in the context of Godwin’s growing concern about violent actions and words on both sides of the political divide. Gines and Caleb each become involved with the same gang of robbers; Gines persecutes Caleb through defamatory broadsheets. The novel dramatizes Godwin’s fears over the increasing populism and polarization of the public sphere in the 1790s.
M. O. Grenby, in ‘Godwin’s Popular Stories for the Nursery’, explores the origins of Godwin’s career as a children’s writer and publisher. Godwin’s engagement with children’s literature was carefully considered and dated from as early as 1798. Evidence from his diary and archival sources, close readings, and computational stylistic analysis combine to reveal Godwin as the author of three anonymously published books (1804-5) in Benjamin Tabart’s groundbreaking series, Popular Stories for the Nursery: The Story of Griselda; History of Robin Hood; and Richard Coeur de Lion. This discovery entitles Godwin to a previously unacknowledged place in the development of children’s historical fiction.
Eliza O’Brien, in ‘Godwin and the Love of Fame’, explores Godwin’s treatment of fame, virtue, and benevolence in several of his works. As the author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Godwin experienced the positive effects of fame; but his celebration of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and work in Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) misfired. He addressed the threat posed by the love of fame in three novels: Caleb Williams (1794), St Leon (1799) and Fleetwood (1805). While Godwin recognized the allure of fame, he was keenly aware of its potential for destruction.
Helen Stark, in ‘An Illustrated Afterlife: William Godwin’s Essay on Sepulchres’, analyzes an extra-illustrated copy of Essay on Sepulchres (1809). The inside front cover is signed by the landscape artist, John Linnell (1792-1882), but when the book was sold at auction in 1992, the drawings were attributed to the collector William Young Ottley (1771-1836). Stark plots the history of this unique copy and explores Godwin’s social contacts with artists. The relationship between drawings and text indicates a longer afterlife for Godwin’s Essay on Sepulchres than is usually acknowledged.
Pamela Clemit and Avner Offer, in ‘Godwin’s Citations, 1783-2005: Highest Renown at the Pinnacle of Disfavour’, challenge the received view that Godwin enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame as the author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and Caleb Williams (1794) but sank into obscurity after 1800. They examine Godwin’s citations using two sources, one from the outset of his career to 1966, the other starting in 1900. Godwin’s peak of citation renown occurs later than might have been expected, in 1801, and is mostly negative. When in deep disfavour, he was highly visible. Godwin’s reputation fell into several different periods, not just one. His flame never went out entirely, and has surged again in recent decades.
New Approaches to William Godwin is now available for purchase in print, or in electronic form as a whole or in individual chapters. To view the contents, click here.
A graph showing William Godwin’s reputation measured by citations, 1783-2005 (Clemit and Offer, p. 278).
Pamela Clemit 