Caleb Williams (Broadview Literary Texts)

William Godwin; Gary Handwerk; Arnold A. Markley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551112493 ISBN 13: 9781551112497

Publisher: Broadview Press, 2000

William Godwin was one of the most popular novelists of the Romantic era; P.B. Shelley praised him, Byron drew heavily on his narrative style, and Mary Shelley, Godwin's daughter, dedicated Frankenstein to him. Caleb Williams is the riveting account of a young man whose curiosity leads him to pry into a murder from the past. The first novel of crime and detection in English literature, Caleb Williams is also a powerful expose of the evils and inequities of the political and social system in 1790s Britain. In addition to the text itself, the editors have included an extensive selection of primary source materials from the period, ranging from Godwin's original manuscript ending and excerpts from his political writings to contemporary reviews, the political writings of Burke and Paine, and materials on criminals and the English prison system.

Review:

"The originality of Caleb Williams will be obvious to the student or general reader who encounters it in this exemplary addition to the Broadview [Editions] series. The editors provide a clear, thorough introduction that places the novel in its political, philosophical, and literary contexts, as well as a chronology and bibliography. Six appendices serve up generous helpings of the fruits of recent scholarship that illuminate the fiction's relation to things as they were. Providing glimpses of Godwin at work, samples of ardent political discourse of the 1790s, and snippets of narrative by Holcroft, Wollstonecraft, Richardson, Defoe, and less well-known writers, the supplementary materials are fascinating in themselves." - Rachel M. Brownstein, The Graduate School and University Center, CUNY

About the Author:

Gary Handwerk is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington.

The late A.A. Markley was an Assistant Professor of English at Penn State University, Delaware County. Both have written extensively on Romantic literature, and have edited the Broadview edition of Godwin's Fleetwood.