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"Caleb Williams is the riveting account of a young man whose curiosity leads him to pry into a murder from the past. The first novel of crime and detection in English literature, Caleb Williams is also a powerful expose of the evils and inequities of the political and social system in 1790s Britain.".
"In addition to the text itself, the editor's have included an extensive selection of primary source materials from the period, ranging from Godwin's original manuscript ending and excerpts from his political writings to contemporary reviews, the political writings of Burke and Paine, and materials on criminals and the English prison system."--BOOK JACKET.
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Subjects
Fiction, Executions and executioners, Master and servant, False imprisonment, Young men, Murderers, Didactic fiction, Williams, caleb (fictitious character), fiction, Fiction, general, England, fiction, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Classic Literature, Anarchism, Anarchism; writers of international importance; William Godwin and his circle; Godwin (author), Anarchisme; auteurs van internationale betekenis; William Godwin en zijn kring; werken van Godwin, Fiction, coming of age, Fiction, action & adventurePeople
William Godwin (1756-1836)Places
EnglandShowing 11 featured editions. View all 73 editions?
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Things as they are, or, The adventures of Caleb Williams
1988, Penguin Books
in English
0140432566 9780140432565
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Things as they are: or, The adventures of Caleb Williams
1816, Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshal
in English
- The 4th ed.
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 569-573).
Originally published as: Things as they are, or, The adventures of Caleb Williams.
"In addition to the text itself, the editors have included an extensive selection of primary source materials from the period"--P. [4] of cover.
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Work Description
The Adventures of Caleb Williams, or Things as They Are (1794) by William Godwin is a three-volume novel written as a call to end the abuse of power by what Godwin saw as a tyrannical government. Intended as a popularization of the ideas presented in his 1793 treatise Political Justice Godwin uses Caleb Williams to show how legal and other institutions can and do destroy individuals, even when the people the justice system touches are innocent of any crime. This reality, in Godwin's mind was therefore a description of "things as they are."The novel describes the downfall of Ferdinando Falkland, a British squire, and his attempts to ruin and destroy the life of Caleb Williams, a poor but ambitious young man that Falkland hires as his personal secretary. Caleb accidentally discovers a terrible secret in his master's past. Though Caleb promises to be bound to silence, Falkland, irrationally attached (in Godwin's view) to ideas of social status and inborn virtue, cannot bear that his servant should possibly have power over him, and sets out to use various means--unfair trials, imprisonment, pursuit, to make sure that the information of which Caleb is the bearer will never be revealed.Godwin described the book as "a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities", so that Caleb Williams can be classified as an early thriller or mystery novel.In order to evade a censorship ban on presenting the novel on the stage, the impresario Richard Brinsley Sheridan presented the piece on the stage of his Drury Lane Theatre in 1796 under the title The Iron Chest, his pretext for avoiding censorship being that his resident composer Stephen Storace had made an "operatic version" of the story.
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- Created April 1, 2008
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July 18, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |