William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Preface
WILLIAM GODWIN:
HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES.
BY
C. KEGAN PAUL.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. I.
Henry S. King & Co., London
1876.
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The rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.
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PREFACE.
My best thanks are due to Sir Percy
Shelley, the grandson of William
Godwin, for the generous manner in which he has placed at my disposal the
whole of the papers in his possession which relate to his grandfather. These included a
vast quantity of letters and other MSS., some of which had never been opened since they
were laid aside by Godwin’s own hand, many years before his
death. Mrs Shelley began to arrange them for
publication soon after that event, in 1836, but many packets had apparently not been
examined by her. This fact renders it the more necessary that I should state that while
Sir Percy Shelley has sanctioned my work as a whole, he is in no
way whatever answerable for details. I only am responsible for the selections made and
inferences drawn from the papers, as well as for every opinion expressed in the book.
A very few of the letters have been already printed—some of Godwin’s
by Lady Shelley in her “Shelley Memorials,” and some of Coleridge’s by Mr
Garnett in a Magazine article.
In all cases where there appeared to be the smallest doubt in regard to the
publication of documents, I have consulted, where possible, the representatives of the
persons concerned, and have obtained their permission to print the letters.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Richard Garnett (1835-1906)
The son of the Rev. Richard Garnett (1789–1850), he was keeper of printed books at the
British Library and a translator and essayist.
William Godwin (1756-1836)
English novelist and political philosopher; author of
An Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793) and
Caleb
Williams (1794); in 1797 he married Mary Wollstonecraft.
Lady Jane Shelley [née Gibson] (1820-1899)
The daughter of Thomas Gibson; in 1841 she married Hon. Charles Robert St. John, son of
George Richard St. John, third Viscount Bolingbroke, and in 1848 Sir Percy Florence
Shelley, third baronet, son of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [née Godwin] (1797-1851)
English novelist, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecaft, and the second wife
of Percy Bysshe Shelley. She is the author of
Frankenstein (1818)
and
The Last Man (1835) and the editor of Shelley's works
(1839-40).
