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.

St Leon (1799), Godwin's second novel, is a work of challenging ambition. Like his first, Caleb Williams (1794), it is a confessional tale of obsession and spiralling pursuit. In St Leon the emphasis is on the individual's powerlessness in the face of momentous historical change. Set during the Protestant Reformation, St Leon tells the harrowing tale of an exiled French aristocrat who is given the secrets of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His attempts to use these gifts to benefit humanity lead only to disaster. Plunged into self-destructive isolation, he wanders through the...

In William Godwin's dark psychological novel of paranoia and persecution, the eponymous hero is a guileless young servant who enters the employment of Ferdinando Falkland, a cosmopolitan and benevolent country gentleman. Falkland is subject to fits of unexplained melancholy, and Caleb becomes convinced that he harbors a dark secret. His discovery of the truth leads to false accusations against him, and a vengeful pursuit as suspenseful as any thriller. The novel is also a powerful political allegory, inspired by the events of the decade following the French Revolution. This is the first...

'To a rational being there can be but one rule of conduct, justice, and one mode of ascertaining that rule, the exercise of his understanding.'
Godwin's Political Justice is the founding text of philosophical anarchism. Written in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, it exemplifies the political optimism felt by many writers and intellectuals. Godwin drew on enlightenment ideas and his background in religious dissent for the principles of justice, utility, and the sanctity of individual judgement that drove his powerful critique of all forms of secular and religious...

One of the great polemics and the key founding anarchist text, Godwin's Enquiry is his major work of political philosophy. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice established William Godwin as the chief exponent of British radicalism, in the tradition of the French Revolution. In it, he criticizes the 'brute engine' of government for systematizing oppression of individual liberty in the name of law and order, and calls for the abolition of all forms of rule and for the institution of an anarchist society based on the principles of simplicity, sincerity and equality. His book influenced everyone...

GodwinAEs Mandeville , published in 1817, was described as his best novel by Shelley, who sent a copy to Byron, and it was recognized by its admirers as a work of unique psychological power. As Shelley wrote in a letter to Godwin, the novelAEs interest is of othat irresistible and overwhelming kind.o Written one year after the battle of Waterloo and set in an earlier revolutionary period between the execution of Charles I and the Restoration, Mandeville is a novel of psychological warfare. The narrative proceeds through MandevilleAEs early education by a fanatical Presbyterian minister to his...