ABSTRACT
Critical interest in William Godwin, who was a wildly successful and influential political and social theorist in the 1790s, faded within a decade to a controlled whisper as consumers of political theory turned away from radical texts such as his. Political Justice and his first novel, Caleb Williams, were read as companion pieces then, and generate the most critical interest still, although Godwin also produced plays, histories, essays, and children’s books in his long career. His experiments with the novel form are widely considered to have been influential with early mystery writers, though modern readers will have difficulty discerning such an influence in Godwin’s sometimes pompous approach to storytelling, so sharply does it contrast to the glibness of Charles Dickens, and the sleek, cerebral sparseness of the better modern mystery novelists. The family line is nevertheless detectable within plot elements, most notably in the long-distance pursuit and legal imbroglio, pioneered by Godwin, that have set many a mystery-novel stage since. Similar claims have been made for Godwin’s influence upon early socialists and anarchists. The threat of government intrusion into the privacy of the politically unempowered individual, a major concern to Godwin, found an audience within proletarian movements throughout the century, as his works were translated first into French, then later into Spanish and Russian.
