The Godwinian letter: William Godwin's epistolary exchanges, 1778-1805
Keywords: romantic period
eighteenth century
William Godwin
private letters
epistolary culture

The resurgence in scholarly recognition of William Godwin’s (1756-1836) centrality in the final decades of the eighteenth century has given new significance to his private writings. The recently activated online Godwin Diary (2010), hosted by the Oxford Digital Library at the Bodleian, is an invaluable record of Godwin’s day-to-day routine from 1788 to his death in April 1836. In addition, the publication of the first two volumes of a projected six- volume edition of Godwin’s extant letters (OUP, 2011—), edited by Pamela Clemit, restores access to various neglected lines of inquiry in Godwin criticism – in particular his epistolary exchanges.
The main argument of this study concerns the ways that Godwin makes use of epistolary form. By considering Godwin’s ‘epistolary exchanges’, I concern myself with the letter’s status as a relational document – whereby the roles of writer and reader change between one exchange and another – and the ways in which this affected Godwin’s self- presentation in his correspondences. I also investigate the intersection between different ‘voices’ in Godwin’s epistolary exchanges and explore the role and/or place of convention and innovation in his use of the private letter.
My aim is not to provide a biographical survey of Godwin through his letters, but rather to explore a selection of letters that I judge to be intrinsically interesting and productive for a critical repossession of Godwin. As such, this thesis examines Godwin’s epistolary exchanges from 1778 to 1805, the years during which his literary fame reached its zenith and then rapidly declined. These years of transition and experiment are recorded in his letters, and tell the story of his epistolary development – from the pupil of Rational Dissent, for whom correspondence is a tool used in the observance of one’s allegiance to the principles of religious nonconformity; to the political radical, who views the epistolary exchange as a space in which the terms of discourse itself can be radically reimagined; to the embattled public intellectual for whom the writing of carefully argued letters is a means of adjusting to a newly decentred position; and, finally, to the family man for whom the epistolary exchange becomes a shared and intimate space.
The letters from 1778 to 1805 introduce us to a more complex if also more complete Godwin than we have previously seen and present us with a challenge to reconsider our established narratives of his thought, his character, and his personal and public voices. Letters are a transitionary form, situated as they are on the boundaries of the personal and impersonal, the private and public. Godwin was an intellectual thinker who sought to convey his philosophical commitment to reform to different readerships by exploiting a wide variety of literary forms. This thesis, which is the first sustained study of his letters, will demonstrate that Godwin’s epistolary exchanges are a continuation of his published works by other means.
Chapter One, Early Letters: Finding a Voice in Dissent, frames Godwin’s epistolary practices and aims in the context of Rational Dissent. Chapter Two, Revolutionary Letters: New Forms of Discourse, considers Godwin as a letter-writer who used the epistolary form to test out his gradualist approach to moral and political reform. Chapter Three, Romantic Correspondence: ‘A New Mode of Living’, examines the transformative influence of Mary Wollstonecraft on Godwin’s epistolary voice and his instruction in the language of feeling. Chapter Four, Years of Transition: Godwin’s Reputation in Decline, 1797-1801, examines the turbulent letter exchanges that Godwin engaged in during his precipitate descent from the heights of fame at the end of the eighteenth century. Chapter Five, Years of Experiment: New Correspondents, New Concerns, 1800-1805, argues that a study of Godwin’s letters demonstrates that reports of his disappearance below the critical horizon at the beginning of the nineteenth century have been exaggerated.