Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle Part 9

WILLIAM G.o.dWIN

G.o.dwin's works are now procurable only in old libraries, with the exception of _Caleb Williams_. _Political Justice_ should be read in the second edition (1796), which is maturer than the first and more lively than the third. A modern summary of it by Mr. Salt, with the full text of the last section "On Property," was published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. This selection emphasises his communism, but hardly does full justice to the novelty of his anarchist opinions. Full biographical data are to be found in _William G.o.dwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, by Mr. Kegan Paul, which contains a readable collection of letters. There is a painstaking and elaborate study in French by Raymond Gourg (Felix Alcan, 1908) and a stimulating little essay in German from the anarchist standpoint (_William G.o.dwin, der Theoretiker des Kommunistischen Anarchismus._ Von Pierre Ramus. Leipzig. Dietrich).

For a modern statement of Anarchist Communism read Kropotkin's _The Conquest of Bread_ (Chapman and Hall).

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

_The Rights of Woman_ has been reissued in Everyman's Library. The volume of _Selections_ in the Regent Library (Herbert and Daniel) was well edited by Miss Jebb, and may be recommended, for Mary Wollstonecraft rather gains than loses by compression. For her life Mr.

Kegan Paul's _William G.o.dwin_ should be consulted. The edition of the _Rights_, published by T. Fisher Unwin, contains an admirable critical study of Mrs. Fawcett. There is no general history of the so-called "feminist" movement, and in English books the French pioneers are ignored. Mr. Lyon Blease has some good historical chapters in _The Emanc.i.p.ation of English Women_.

Sh.e.l.lEY

Sh.e.l.ley literature is a library in itself. The standard edition is Forman's; the standard biography is the tolerant, human, gossipy _Life_ by Professor Dowden. The general reader can use no better edition than Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's. Of critical essays the most notable are Matthew Arnold's oddly unsympathetic essay, and Sir Leslie Stephen's informing but hostile study on _G.o.dwin and Sh.e.l.ley_ ("Hours in a Library"). Professor Santayana may be mentioned among the few critics who have realised that Sh.e.l.ley thought before he sang (_Winds of Doctrine_). Incomparably the best of all the critical essays is the little monograph by Francis Thompson (Burns and Oates).

_POSTSCRIPT_, 1942

Since this book was written two indispensable aids to the study of G.o.dwin and his Circle have been published. (1) An adequate modern life of G.o.dwin is now available: _The Life of William G.o.dwin_ by Ford K.

Brown (J. M. Dent & Sons). The work could hardly have been better done.

(2) Mr. Elbridge Colby has given us in two volumes a modern edition of _The Life of Thomas Holcroft_ (Constable & Co.) by himself with Hazlitt's continuation. Mr. Colby's scholarly notes and introduction add greatly to its value.

A modern edition of G.o.dwin's _Political Justice_ (Knopf, Political Science Cla.s.sics) is now available, but cannot be recommended. The editor has abbreviated it by capricious omissions.

_The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers_ by Carl L.

Becker (Oxford University Press, also Yale) is a most readable study of the political thought of the period. See also Professor H. J. Laski's _The Rise of European Liberalism_ (Allen & Unwin) and _Voltaire_ by H.

N. Brailsford in this series.