Caleb Williams; Or, Things as They Are (1794) is a novel by English writer and political philosopher William Godwin. Published a year after the appearance of his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Caleb Williams; Or, Things as They Are is a thriller and mystery based on the principles set forth in his popular work of anarchist political philosophy.
Caleb Williams, a self-educated orphan, gets a job at the estate of Ferdinando Falkland, a reclusive aristocrat. Curious as to his master’s temperamental nature, Williams asks the estate’s administrator to share any information he knows regarding Falkland’s past. Through Mr. Collins, Caleb learns of Falkland’s feud with Barnabas Tyrrel, his oppressive neighbor. Caleb is surprised to discover that Falkland was once regarded as a generous and gregarious gentleman who persevered in vain for the love of Tyrrel’s niece. Following Emily Melville’s untimely death and the unsolved murder of Barnabas Tyrrel, Falkland became an embittered man, prone to violent outbursts and averse to social interaction. Shocked by Mr. Collins’s account, Caleb begins to investigate Falkland’s behavior and soon grows to suspect his master of murder. When news of his suspicion reaches Falkland, he accuses Caleb of attempted theft, forcing the young man to flee under threat of imprisonment. A fugitive, Caleb resists the temptations of criminal life, but the past—and Falkland—are never far behind him.
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William Godwin (1756-1836) was an English political philosopher and novelist. Born to a middle-class Calvinist family, Godwin was raised by his mother following his father’s death. Encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister, Godwin studied at Hoxton Academy under Andrew Kippis, Abraham Rees, and Robert Sandeman, influential nonconformist clergymen and theologians. While serving as a minister in the town of Ware, Godwin was introduced to the teachings of the French Encyclopédistes by Joseph Fawcett, a radical dissenter and proud republican. With this background in political philosophy, Godwin launched a career as a prominent intellectual who proposed the abolition of political, social, and religious institutions. His most influential work, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), is considered one of the earliest modern defenses of anarchism and elevated Godwin to the center of a national debate involving the British response to the French Revolution. The following year, Godwin published Caleb Williams; Or, Things as They Are (1794), a mystery novel based on the principles set forth in his popular work of political philosophy. In 1797, Godwin married English feminist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, having met her years earlier through Joseph Johnson, their mutual publisher. That year, Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth, leaving the infant and Fanny, her daughter from a previous marriage, in Godwin’s care. Remarrying in 1801, Godwin raised his daughter Mary—who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote the novel Frankenstein (1818)—alongside his adopted children while running a bookshop and publishing house specializing in children’s literature.
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