Biography Essay

A protean intellectual, William Godwin enjoyed a career that reflects in microcosm the changing face of literature, society, and politics in England from the onset of the French Revolution to the end of the Romantic age (1789-1832). The prophet of a future political order founded on justice and reason was the author of haunting psychological novels and an enormous amount of intellectual prose. Godwin's writings—along with those of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, his nearly exact contemporary, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, his son-in-law—effectively combine creative imagination and philosophical speculation. He is best remembered for his controversial philosophical treatise, An Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793), and for Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), a precursor of the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevski and Franz Kafka, and the modern detective story. In addition, he wrote five other noteworthy novels, a monumental biography of...