Godwin and the Book

Examines the place of media technology in the literary and intellectual history of Romantic-era BritainExplores the literary figuration of media technology and its useOffers a fresh reading of Godwin's corpus, which involves an unusual claim about its fundamental consistency across time and generic boundariesExamines major controversies of the period, including: the physiology of the mind; the ethics of novel-reading; practical reading advice; the nature of truth; the nature of afterlifeDraws attention to the enormous impact of protestant dissent on the literature and philosophy of the Romantic periodGodwin and the Book explores a network of controversies concerning the relationship of media form to social futurity in Romantic-period Britain through the writing of the notorious philosopher-novelist William Godwin (1756 1836). It offers a fresh reading of Godwin's fifty-year corpus, using evidence from his fiction, philosophy and essays to argue that, throughout his career, he figured books and reading in particular ways in order to defend a set of inherited beliefs about intellectual perfectibility. In the process, it highlights many wider debates that marked out the culture of this period including disagreements over the physiology of the mind, the ethics of novel-reading, and the social consequences of death and considers how these debates were intertwined with the formal development of British prose in the period.