
The Letters of William Godwin
Volume IV: 1816-1828
Pamela Clemit(Editor)
Oxford University Press
Will be published approx. on 9. June 2026
Book
Hardback
640 pages
978-0-19-956264-0 (ISBN)
Description
This is the fourth volume of the landmark scholarly edition of William Godwin's letters, and the largest in the series. It contains 404 letters with full scholarly apparatus. Volume IV shows Godwin in his prime, reverting to form as a prolific man of letters, seeking to foster public virtue. He goes back to his roots as a radical polymath, grappling with the enduring questions of justice, inequality, and social improvement that had fired his intellect since the 1790s.
Volume I reflected the origins and impact of Godwin's An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and showed him at the height of his reputation. Volume II showed him responding to changes in public opinion, modifying his philosophical commitments, and remaking himself as the author of novels, plays, and biographies. Volume III (in preparation) highlights his career as an author and publisher of children's books.
The letters in Volume IV trace the resurgence of Godwin's reputation as he published a sequence of major works intervening in urgent public debates of the day: the population question, the nature of civic education, and the legacy of the seventeenth-century English republican experiment. They provide an eyewitness view of the condition of post-Waterloo Britain and the years of political unrest leading up to the legislative reforms of 1828-32.
Many letters track Godwin's research activities and record his dealings with pre-eminent publishers, including Archibald Constable and Henry Colburn. Other letters show him corresponding with a new generation of critics and acolytes. They transform understanding of his complicated family life, notably his relations with his daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and his son-in-law Percy Bysshe Shelley. They testify to Godwin's powers of Stoic endurance in the face of misfortunes: financial insecurity, which culminated in bankruptcy, and a series of personal tragedies.
The letters in Volume IV are tempered by the wisdom of experience, some of it dearly bought. They show Godwin working to create a better future, not just for himself and his family, but for all humanity.
Volume I reflected the origins and impact of Godwin's An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and showed him at the height of his reputation. Volume II showed him responding to changes in public opinion, modifying his philosophical commitments, and remaking himself as the author of novels, plays, and biographies. Volume III (in preparation) highlights his career as an author and publisher of children's books.
The letters in Volume IV trace the resurgence of Godwin's reputation as he published a sequence of major works intervening in urgent public debates of the day: the population question, the nature of civic education, and the legacy of the seventeenth-century English republican experiment. They provide an eyewitness view of the condition of post-Waterloo Britain and the years of political unrest leading up to the legislative reforms of 1828-32.
Many letters track Godwin's research activities and record his dealings with pre-eminent publishers, including Archibald Constable and Henry Colburn. Other letters show him corresponding with a new generation of critics and acolytes. They transform understanding of his complicated family life, notably his relations with his daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and his son-in-law Percy Bysshe Shelley. They testify to Godwin's powers of Stoic endurance in the face of misfortunes: financial insecurity, which culminated in bankruptcy, and a series of personal tragedies.
The letters in Volume IV are tempered by the wisdom of experience, some of it dearly bought. They show Godwin working to create a better future, not just for himself and his family, but for all humanity.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-956264-0 (9780199562640)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Pamela Clemit is Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. Her other books include The Godwinian Novel (1993), also published by Oxford University Press. She has published a dozen or so scholarly editions of Godwin's writings, including St Leon (1994) and Caleb Williams (2009), both for Oxford World's Classics, and The Letters of William Godwin, Volumes I and II (2011, 2014). In 2016 she received the Keats-Shelley Association of America Distinguished Scholar Award. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
Content
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF LETTERS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS INTRODUCTION A NOTE ON EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES CHRONOLOGY: WILLIAM GODWIN, 1816-1828 LETTERS, 1816-1828 (Numbers 745-1148) APPENDIX 1: Promissory Notes APPENDIX 2: Publishers' Memoranda APPENDIX 3: 1823 Subscription Letter APPENDIX 4: Juvenile Library Bankruptcy Memoranda APPENDIX 5: Letters in the Abinger Papers: Old and New Shelfmarks INDEX