SOURCE: Fisher, Carl. “The Crowd and the Public in Godwin's Caleb Williams.” In Women, Revolution, and the Novels of the 1790s, edited by Linda Lang-Peralta, pp. 47-67. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Fisher explores Godwin's inclusion of the larger community as a force that reacts to the words and deeds of individual characters within his novel.

Nothing is more notorious than the ease with which the conviviality of a crowded feast may degenerate into the depredations of a riot. While the sympathy of opinion catches from man to man, especially among persons whose passions have been little used to the curb of judgment, actions may be determined on which the solitary reflection of all would have rejected. There is nothing more barbarous, blood-thirsty and unfeeling than the triumph of the mob.

—Enquiry Concerning Political Justice¹

Few novels engage their historical moment as cogently...