A Short Residence in Sweden & Memoirs of the Author of 'The Rights of Woman'

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was a writer and founding feminist philosopher. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is her most famous work, but she also wrote novels, treatises and a history of the French Revolution, many of whose events she witnessed first-hand in Paris. She died eleven days after giving birth to her daughter, Mary Shelley.

In these two closely linked works - a travel book and a biography of its author - we witness a moving encounter between two of the most daring and original minds of the late eighteenth century: A Short Residence in Sweden is the record of Wollstonecraft's last journey in search of happiness, into the remote and beautiful backwoods of Scandinavia. The quest for a lost treasure ship, the pain of a wrecked love affair, memories of the French Revolution, and the longing for some Golden Age, all shape this vivid narrative, which Richard Holmes argues is one of the neglected masterpieces of early English Romanticism. 
 
Memoirs is Godwin's own account of Wollstonecraft's life, written with passionate intensity a few weeks after her tragic death. Casting aside literary convention, Godwin creates an intimate portrait of his wife, startling in its candour and psychological truth. Received with outrage by friends and critics alike, and virtually suppressed for a century, it can now be recognized as one of the landmarks in the development of modern biography.

Caleb Williams

A radical, taught and disturbing novel of corruption, injustice and guilty secrets

William Godwin was an important figure in the transition from Enlightenment thinking to Romanticism during the early nineteenth century. A radical philosopher, novelist, historian, and progressive educationalist, he was in East Anglia in 1756 and trained for five years for the Dissenting ministry at Hoxton Academy, before abandoning a career as a minister to become a writer. The lover of Mary Wollstonecraft, his followers included Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, and Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne were all influenced by his work. He died in London in 1836. 
 
 
Maurice Hindle divides his time between freelance writing and teaching for the Open University. He has also edited Frankenstein for the Penguin Classics.

When honest young Caleb Williams comes to work as a secretary for Squire Falkland, he soon begins to suspect that his new master is hiding a terrible secret. But as he digs deeper into Falkland's past and finally unearths the guilty truth, the results of his curiosity prove calamitous when - even though Caleb has loyally sworn never to disclose what he has discovered - the Squire enacts a cruel revenge. A tale of gripping suspense and psychological power, William Godwin's novel creates a searing depiction of the intolerable persecution meted out to a good man in pursuit of justice and equality. Written to expose the political oppression and corrupt hierarchies its author saw in the world around him, Caleb Williams (1794) makes a radical call to end the tyrannical misuses of power.

William Godwin

Books by William Godwin

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