The Letters of William Godwin: Volume 3

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William Godwin (1756-1836) was one of the leading public intellectuals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: among many other things, a prominent philosopher, novelist, dramatist, historian, educationalist, biographer and publisher. His most famous works - 'An Enquiry concerning Political Justice' (1793) and the novel 'Caleb Williams' (1794) - had a transformative effect on social and political thought and on the development of English fiction. Later and less celebrated writings - and indeed his conversation and correspondence - were enormously influential in a number of other spheres too. He was a pioneering author, publisher and theorist of children's literature; and he engaged in creative dialogue with many of the principal literary figures of his age, notably Coleridge, Hazlitt and the man who would become his son-in-law, Percy Shelley.Godwin's collected letters are for the first time now being published, by Oxford University Press, in a prestigious and authoritative six-volume edition. Volume III will include all the letters Godwin wrote between 1806 and 1815: approximately 338. In biographical terms, the volume will cover the early years of Godwin's marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont, his second wife and business partner. This was a period of financial difficulty, especially since Godwin had a family of five young children to support (including the two daughters of his first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, and two of Mary Jane's children from previous relationships), and in 1805 Godwin and his wife founded the 'Juvenile Library', a ground-breaking venture in children's publishing. The earliest children's book that has remained continuously in print was published there - Charles and Mary Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespear' (1807). So too were other landmarks of children's literature, including an experimental comic picture-book 'The Queen of Hearts' (1805), and 'The Swiss Family Robinson' (1814). Godwin himself wrote 'Fables Ancient and Modern' (1805) and 'The Pantheon, or Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome' (1806). Taken together with his 'Bible Stories' (1802), these represent a complete repackaging of children's traditional reading materials, revised according to Godwin's rational but strikingly modern pedagogical ideas. His letters document the development of Godwin's educational thinking, but also shed rare light on the logistics of publishing in the period. Revealing the minutiae of the business, the letters will be hugely important for scholars of publishing history, and most especially for those interested in the development of children's literature as an independent sector of print culture.Letters towards the end of Volume III trace the implosion of Godwin's family. Godwin began corresponding with his would-be disciple Shelley in 1812, further expounding his political ideas and seeking to moderate Shelley's radicalism. In 1814, Shelley eloped with Godwin's daughter Mary (later author of 'Frankenstein'). Godwin's stepdaughter Jane (Claire) Clairmont, later to be Lord Byron's lover, went with them. By 1816, another stepdaughter, Fanny, had committed suicide, as had Shelley's first wife, allowing Shelley and Mary to marry, and thus Godwin's reconciliation with him.Godwin's letters will show us many things: about publishing, education, sociability, patronage, intellectual and cultural life and personal relationships in the Romantic-era. They demonstrate that he remained at the centre of a complex and ever-changing network of many of the most important writers, artists and thinkers working both in Britain and abroad. His letters engage with new ideas and are often the site of intellectual argument, as well as personal controversies. They demonstrate that Godwin's commitment to political and social reform was by no means extinguished after the widespread attacks on him in the 1790s. The letters will be a remarkable source for a great many researchers working on a huge range of subjects.