"Imogen" - Godwin's fuctional debut; "Caleb Williams" - the paradigm of the Godwinian novel; Godwin's historical novels - theory and practice; "Wieland" - Charles Brockdan Brown's American tale; "Frankenstein" - Mary Shelley's mythmaking; Mary Shelley's novels of the 1820s - history and prophecy; afterword - retreading the Godwinian novel.
Pamela Clemit is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of
London and a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Her
other books include The Godwinian Novel (1993), also published by
Oxford University Press. She has published a dozen or so scholarly
and critical editions of William Godwin's and Mary Shelley's
writings, including an Oxford World's Classics edition of Caleb
Williams (2009) and The Letters of William Godwin, Volume
I: 1778-1797 (2011). She has been a visiting research fellow at the
New York Public Library, at All Souls College, Oxford, and at
Wadham College, Oxford. In 2016 she was awarded the Keats-Shelley
Association of America
Distinguished Scholar Award.
`to write ably and with little fuss or obvious polemic in an area
where factions clash, and still to maintain a clearly discernable
thesis with firmness and with concern for the reader's
understanding and sympathy is rare ... This innovatory book ably
demonstrates relationships between Godwin's fictions and his
changing political ideas'
Durham University Journal
'Pamela Clemit convincingly makes her case. Her readings of
Frankenstein and of The Last Man have the great virtue of insisting
on the public resonance of both novels. She makes large claims, but
they are well supported. If this book has the influence it
deserves, I can look forward to reading a very different set of
essays on Frankenstein next year.'
Richard Cronin, University of Glasgow. Notes and Queries. Vol 41 No
2 June '94
'... challenging and enjoyable ...'
Robert W. Uphaus. Michigan State University. Eighteenth-Century
Fiction 6:3
`'The question 'Was there a Godwin "school"?' is not the primary
focus of this book, but one of the many virtues of Pamela Clemit's
intelligent study is that we are, by the end, left in little doubt
about the answer. This is a sure and useful book, unfussily written
and admirably referenced. It is informative and convincing, and has
a strong sense of literary form as well as an enviable grasp of the
currents of thought over half a century. As such, Clemit
makes a commendable contribution to our knowledge and understanding
both of the Godwin circle and of the revolutionary period.'
Modern Language Review
`An intelligent, useful, and suggestive study for students of both
American and British fiction of the early nineteenth century.'
Nineteenth-Century Literature
`The strength of Clemit's account of the development of a genre is
its capacity to acknowledge the complex relations between literary,
political and cultural issues in the period.'
The Keats-Shelley Review
`a valuable, deeply argued study.'
English Studies Vol 75 no 6
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