This collection showcases work on William Godwin (1756-1836) foregrounding new critical approaches and uncovering new texts. Godwin is a familiar presence in scholarship on the Shelley-Godwin circle and on Dissenting intellectual circles, but the present collection considers him closely as an author and thinker on his own terms. The range of texts and topics covered by this collection will be of interest both to scholars familiar with Godwin and those approaching his work for the first time.

William Godwin is one of the most important figures of the Romantic period. He wrote four plays at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th centuries. This book has two main objectives: to provide the first comprehensive discussion of these four plays, and to consider the notion of theatricality in relation to Godwin’s political project.

This biography of “a vital player in Revolutionary circles . . . offers us an important role model . . . a fearless woman almost lost to the fog of history” (Charlotte Gordon, Ph.D., author of Romantic Outlaws, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for biography). This first-ever biography of Harriet de Boinville explores her close relationships with Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and other leading writers of the Romantic era, but also tells the gripping story of Harriet's early years as the wife of an aristocratic military officer during the French-English Wars, when she experienced a naval attack in the Caribbean, a shipwreck off the coast of France, and detention as a suspected spy in Dunkirk. Combining literary history and gender study with the engaging story of a courageous and caring woman, this ground-breaking book has generated extraordinary praise from renowned authors and experts. “. . . fascinating history, but it's also an adventure tale and a romance . . .” —Cory Flintoff, NPR former foreign correspondent. “. . . Harriet de Boinville most engages with her vibrant and resilient self. Her generous personality shines through the letters quoted in this fascinating biography . . .” —Janet Todd, Ph.D., author of Death and the Maidens, and former president of Cambridge University's Cavendish College. “Fascinating . . . Lives like Harriet de Boinville's fill out the story of those formative times as nothing else can . . .” —Fiona Sampson, Ph.D., author of Two-Way Mirror, a Washington Post Book of the Year. “. . . meticulously researched and fluidly written . . . At the Center of the Circle tells the compelling story of a remarkably influential woman . . .” —Kristin Samuelian, Ph.D., Associate Professor at George Mason University and author of Royal Romances.

An impressive and well-crafted essay collection that will be of real interest to Godwin scholars at a time when he remains a prominent figure within Romantic debates. - Paul Keen, is Professor of English at Carleton University, Canada, and author of A Defence of the Humanities in a Utilitarian Age (2020). This collection showcases work on William Godwin (1756-1836) foregrounding new critical approaches and uncovering new texts. Godwin is a familiar presence in scholarship on the Shelley-Godwin circle and on Dissenting intellectual circles, but the present collection considers him closely as an author and thinker on his own terms. The range of texts and topics covered by this collection will be of interest both to scholars familiar with Godwin and those approaching his work for the first time. .

In the 1790s, Britain underwent what the politician Edmund Burke called 'the most important of all revolutions...a revolution in sentiments'. Inspired by the French Revolution, British radicals concocted new political worlds to enshrine healthier, more productive, human emotions and relationships. The Enlightenment's wildest hopes crested in the utopian projects of such optimists - including the young poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the physician Thomas Beddoes and the first photographer Thomas Wedgwood - who sought to reform sex, education, commerce, politics and medicine by freeing desire from repressive constraints. But by the middle of the decade, the wind had changed. The French Revolution descended into bloody Terror and the British government quashed radical political activities. In the space of one decade, feverish optimism gave way to bleak disappointment, and changed the way we think about human need and longing. A Revolution of Feeling is a vivid and absorbing account of the dramatic end of the Enlightenment, the beginning of an emotional landscape preoccupied by guilt, sin, failure, resignation and repression, and the origins of our contemporary approach to feeling and desire. Above all, it is the story of the human cost of political change, of men and women consigned to the 'wrong side of history'. But although their revolutionary proposals collapsed, that failure resulted in its own cultural revolution - a revolution of feeling - the aftershocks of which are felt to the present day.

Even in his own day, Shelley's value as a poet and a thinker was hotly debated. This book argues that Shelley was both ahead of and in tune with his time and ours. Featuring close readings of the key texts, the book includes a reassessment of a previously undervalued work. Contributions from leading academics such as Marilyn Butler, Stuart Curran and Donald Reiman, mix with new ideas from up and coming scholars to expand our knowledge and understanding of this problematic poet.

A collection in eight volumes of the novels and memoirs of William Godwin, one of the foremost philosophers and radical thinkers of his age. There is a general introduction covering Godwin's life and literary works and each volume is prefaced by a scholarly introduction.

A collection in eight volumes of the novels and memoirs of William Godwin, one of the foremost philosophers and radical thinkers of his age. There is a general introduction covering Godwin's life and literary works and each volume is prefaced by a scholarly introduction.

Contains all the major political, philosophical and educational writings of William Godwin, one of the foremost philosophers of his age. His work on government and individual freedom, "Political Justice", made him the chief exponent of English radicalism in the latter half of the 18th century.