The Letters of William Godwin

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.