ABSTRACT
Shortly after Godwin’s death in 1836, Mary Shelley signed a contract with Henry Colburn for the publication of an authorised edition of her father’s memoirs and correspondence. This project was designed to follow the standard nineteenth-century ‘life and letters’ format, in which the subject’s life was shaped by his autobiographical reminiscences. Mary Shelley began work by organising Godwin’s autobiographical notes concerning his early life, by collecting and annotating copies of his letters, and by drafting an accompanying biographical commentary. By 1840, however, it appears that she had abandoned the project, which was never completed or published. This chapter presents passages that are transcribed from Mary Shelley’s unfinished manuscript ‘Life of William Godwin’, contained in the Abinger Collection, deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Despite their fragmentary nature, these passages demonstrate Mary Shelley’s wish to make Godwin’s revolutionary social vision available to a new generation of readers by emphasising its moderate, Whiggish elements.
