SOURCE: Simms, Karl N. “Caleb Williams' Godwin: Things as They Are Written.” Studies in Romanticism 26, no. 3 (fall 1987): 343-63.

In the following essay, Simms examines Godwin's use of first-person narration in Caleb Williams.

In the “Preface” to Fleetwood (1805) Godwin writes: “One caution I have particularly sought to exercise: ‘not to repeat myself.’”¹ This is a curious remark for him to make with regard to his own work, since in writings dated as diversely as 1793 and 1832, the gesture of becoming one's own historian appears several times. In the first edition of Political Justice (1793) this is seen as an effect of the decision of an individual always to employ “real sincerity”:

Did every man impose this law upon himself he would be obliged to consider before he decided upon the commission of an equivocal action, whether he chose to be his own historian, to be the future narrator of the scene...