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If the first volume of Pamela Clemit's magisterial edition of the letters of William Godwin reads like a Jacobin novel, this second volume, produced to the same high standard, which inevitably like an anti-Jacobin one ... Considered as an epistolary anti-Jacobin novel, the second volume of Godwin's letters seems to me better than some actual representations of the genre. The prose is more pointed and varied, from romance to finance, and Pamela Clemit's astute, perfectly balanced notes give necessary background information much more efficiently than the round-about coincidences many epistolary novelists use ... Considered as an editorial production, this volume of Godwin's letters deserves the highest praise, both for the numbers of letters recovered (242) and for their presentation Kenneth Johnston, Review 19 Two meticulously edited and annotated volumes of letters by Romantic philosopher William Godwin give great insights into the Romantic movement and the trials of the literary life in the late 18th and early 19th century ... What we have here are 700 pages of meticulously chosen, prepared and annotated letters, a triumph of scholarship from Professor Pamela Clemit ... Both volumes read like a thriller or a love story ... It is wonderful to know that this is just the beginning: four more volumes of letters are planned. I can't wait to line them up on my bookshelf. Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler

If the first volume of Pamela Clemit's magisterial edition of the letters of William Godwin reads like a Jacobin novel, this second volume, produced to the same high standard, reads inevitably like an anti-Jacobin one ... Considered as an epistolary anti-Jacobin novel, the second volume of Godwin's letters seems to me better than some actual representations of the genre. The prose is more pointed and varied, from romance to finance, and Pamela Clemit's astute, perfectly balanced notes give necessary background information much more efficiently than the round-about coincidences many epistolary novelists use ... Considered as an editorial production, this volume of Godwin's letters deserves the highest praise, both for the numbers of letters recovered (242) and for their presentation Kenneth Johnston, Review 19 Clemit's edition ... not only offers the reader a sense of continuing dialogue or discussion, so vital to the impulse of these epistolary texts ... but also brims with rich historical, biographical and literary annotation, so as to recreate the cross-currents of Godwin's shifting milieu and of the wider networks of Romantic-period writers and thinkers, more generally. In this, it provides a wonderfully suggestive resource not only for Godwin specialists but for scholars of British Romanticism and intellectual history. Jeremy Elprin, Cercles Two meticulously edited and annotated volumes of letters by Romantic philosopher William Godwin give great insights into the Romantic movement and the trials of the literary life in the late 18th and early 19th century ... What we have here are 700 pages of meticulously chosen, prepared and annotated letters, a triumph of scholarship from Professor Pamela Clemit ... Both volumes read like a thriller or a love story ... It is wonderful to know that this is just the beginning: four more volumes of letters are planned. I can't wait to line them up on my bookshelf. Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler The high praise lavished on [Volume I] can also be paid to this second volume. Professor Clemit has again produced a highly informative introduction, a very useful index, some attractive illustrations, interesting details on Godwin's receipts for book sales and his promissory notes, and a huge number of very helpful notes added after each letter. Godwin took great care in composing these letters and it is important that this edition allows us to see the major revisions, which he often made in order to express himself to the greatest effect. The labour invested by Professor Clemit in this volume has been prodigious. Her editorial work, moreover, is of the very highest standard and she has set the bar very high for ... the succeeding volumes in this extremely important series. H. T. Dickinson, Enlightenment and Dissent

Two meticulously edited and annotated volumes of letters by Romantic philosopher William Godwin give great insights into the Romantic movement and the trials of the literary life in the late 18th and early 19th century ... What we have here are 700 pages of meticulously chosen, prepared and annotated letters, a triumph of scholarship from Professor Pamela Clemit ... Both volumes read like a thriller or a love story ... It is wonderful to know that this is just the beginning: four more volumes of letters are planned. I can't wait to line them up on my bookshelf. Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler

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Pamela Clemit is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London and a Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. Her other books include The Godwinian Novel (1993), also published by Oxford University Press. She has published a dozen or so scholarly and critical editions of William Godwin's and Mary Shelley's writings, including an Oxford World's Classics edition of Caleb Williams (2009) and The Letters of William Godwin, Volume I: 1778-1797 (2011). She has been a visiting research fellow at the New York Public Library, at All Souls College, Oxford, and at Wadham College, Oxford. In 2016 she was awarded the Keats-Shelley Association of America Distinguished Scholar Award.

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