BIBLIOGRAPHY
GENERAL
Lecky. History of England in the 18th Century.
Leslie Stephen.—History of English Thought in the 18th Century.
Oliver Elton..—A Survey of English Literature.
Edward Dowden—The French Revolution and English Literature.
The most vivid impression of the period from the standpoint of Godwin's Circle is conveyed in the Memoirs of Thomas Holcroft edited by Hazlitt, and in Hazlitt's portraits of Godwin, Malthus and Mackintosh in The Spirit of the Age (Everyman's Library).
Of the opposite way of thinking the one immortal record is Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Lord Morley's Burke (English Men of Letters) should be read, and the eloquent exposition by Lord Hugh Cecil (Conservatism) in this (H.U.L.) series.
The main works of the French revolutionary thinkers have been issued in Dent's series of French classics. For study and pleasure consult Lord Morley's books on Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot.
The details given in the first chapter concerning the London Corresponding Society are based on its pamphlets in the British Museum.
THOMAS PAINE
Paine's writings are published in cheap editions by the Rationalist Press, and may be had bound in one volume. The same press issues a cheap edition of the admirable Life by Dr. Moncure D. Conway.
WILLIAM GODWIN
Godwin'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 Godwin: 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 (Félix Alcan, 1908) and a stimulating little essay in German from the anarchist standpoint (William Godwin, 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 Godwin 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 Emancipation of English Women.
Shelley 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. Shelley's. Of critical essays the most notable are Matthew Arnold's oddly unsympathetic essay, and Sir Leslie Stephen's informing but hostile study on Godwin and Shelley ("Hours in a Library"). Professor Santayana may be mentioned among the few critics who have realised that Shelley 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 Godwin and his Circle have been published. (1) An adequate modern life of Godwin is now available: The Life of William Godwin 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 Godwin's Political Justice (Knopf, Political Science Classics) 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.