ABSTRACT
The basis on which the whole plot rests is usually some form of usurpation, an old crime, or the like; but the actual impulse is derived from the state of danger and persecution; it furnishes the suspense necessary to keep up the reader’s interest. Caleb Williams begins to suspect that his master and benefactor, the noble-minded and aristocratic Falkland, has committed murder. The ground thus opened proved exceptionally fruitful, and gradually assimilated several other themes of exotic romance. The idea of a material and astral body led naturally to that of a double existence in a new sense: themes relating to somnambulism and hypnotism and deeds committed under such influences emerge on the romantic horizon. The main and most important of the flood of romantic literature poured so swiftly into the literary world of England, and with such an effect of novelty and surprise, that its effect on contemporaries was, one is inclined to believe, petrifying.
