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).