View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by De Montfort University Open Research Archive Sociability in the Writings of William Godwin, with Special Reference to Thomas Holcroft By Emma Povall February 2019 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of De Montfort University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1 Table of Contents Page No. Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Abbreviations 4 Introduction 5-31 Chapter One: Literary and Social Context 32-54 Chapter Two: Practical Experience and Small 55-89 and Friendly Gatherings Chapter Three: Friendship in Principle, Person, 90-141 and Word, and the Influence of Thomas Holcroft Chapter Four: Rectifying ‘“Inattention to the Principle, 142-204 that Feeling, not Judgement, is the Source of Human Actions”’ Conclusion 205-11 Bibliography 212-24 1 Abstract William Godwin was a religious dissenter, political journalist, novelist, and author of the philosophical treatise Political Justice. The principal aim of my thesis is to provide a distinctive investigation of Godwin’s theory of sociability, and to consider its development and practical and literary dissemination. Investigating key influences, I will show his intimate friend, the actor, novelist, and playwright Thomas Holcroft, as having a crucial role in shaping Godwin’s whole model of sociability and intellectual exchange. Examining a selection of Godwin’s and Holcroft’s political writings, letters, diaries, early narratives, and novels reveals how each writer was acutely aware of differing types of genre and audience, and establishes how, at a time of political repression, they practised a politicised model of friendship at the very moment government sought to undermine it. Godwin used his model to develop an idea of essential equality: he sought to engage all of mankind in politically inflected friendship in order to achieve moral equality. Working as a virtual and practical partnership, Godwin and Holcroft shared a belief in the written word as a powerful vehicle of influence and modelled friendship in their writings so as to advance social and political reform. 2 Acknowledgements Sincere thanks go to my supervisor Tim Fulford whose consistent support, encouragement and patience have helped to see this thesis through to submission. Heartfelt thanks also go to my supervisor Felicity James whose warmth, help and encouragement have motivated me and ensured that I keep going. I am deeply indebted to you both for your unceasing generosity, your insight, and for all that you have taught me. I am also grateful to Joe Phelan for forming part of my supervision team and to Phil Cox for his support in the beginning. Without the backing of Midlands Four Cities-AHRC and De Montfort University this work would not have come to fruition, thank you all. Personal thanks to Michael Bradshaw, Friends of Coleridge and Southey, and also to friends and peers in Midlands Four Cities, the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership, BARS Early Careers and Postgraduates, my nephew Haig Smith, and friend Ian Reynolds: all of whom have encouraged, shared in and understood the highs and lows of my PhD journey. A special mention to the Admissions team at Edge Hill University, my work colleagues and friends, you have made me laugh and aided the final stages of this process – thank you. Also, to Maggie for your friendship and practical help when the boys were a little younger. The love and support of my family carries me: my mum, (my dad, sadly departed, but loved and never forgotten), my sister Sally and brother-in-law Alastair, Haig, Georgina, Aparna, Mark, my brother Barry, Jenny, Wilf, and Primrose, I thank you all. Finally, to my sons Josh and Toby you are my everything, a love that knows no bounds, thank you for putting up with the best and worst of this endeavour, I dedicate this work to you. 3 Abbreviations CW William Godwin, Caleb Williams (1794), ed. by Pamela Clemit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) GD William Godwin, The Diary of William Godwin, ed. by Victoria Myers, David O’Shaughnessy, and Mark Philp (Oxford: 2010), <http://www.godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/reading/index- disc.html> GL The Letters of William Godwin, ed. by Pamela Clemit, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 2014) PJ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1794), ed. by Mark Philp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) PPW William Godwin, Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, gen ed. Mark Philp, 7 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1993) 4 Introduction The principal aim of my thesis is to provide a distinctive investigation of Godwin’s theory of sociability, and to consider its development and practical and literary dissemination. Concentrating on the formative period 1773-1805, my thesis deals with Godwin's thought up to the publication of Fleetwood. Friendship for Godwin was more important than has hitherto been argued: even though Godwinian friendship was set out by Godwin in an early, undated manuscript ‘Notes on Friendship’, in sections of Political Justice (1793, 1796, 1798) and in a later essay entitled ‘Of Love and Friendship’ (1831) there is no existing study dedicated solely to his theory.1 Mark Philp has acknowledged the importance of Godwin’s ‘daily experience in the social and intellectual circles in which he moved.’ He further notes that ‘sociability was central to the social world of the intellectual and professional urban middle-classes of the late eighteenth century.’2 That Philp does not trace the theory set out by Godwin is all the more apparent. David O’Shaughnessy has examined the importance of ‘Godwin’s association with theatre’, and although he emphasises the significance of this particular mode of sociability and its importance amongst Godwin’s circles, his study also does not outline Godwin’s sociable theory.3 Jon Mee has examined the importance of conversation in Godwin’s principles of sociability. Godwin’s method of read, reflect, converse highlights conversation as necessary for 1 Although the manuscript is undated, Godwin writes that friendship ‘is perhaps next to the most invaluable jewel the Almighty has placed within the reach of mortals’. The manuscript is therefore recognisable as an early piece when Godwin still identified with his Christian beliefs and was most likely written during his dissenting academy training. William Godwin, ‘Notes on Friendship,’ Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Abinger c. 36, fols. 40-4; PJ; Thoughts on Man, ‘Essay XV Of Love and Friendship’in, PPW VI. A. C. Grayling includes Godwin in his study on friendship throughout the ages, but he only examines his later essay ‘Of Love and Friendship’. A. C. Grayling, Friendship (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 106-11. 2 Mark Philp. Godwin’s Political Justice (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1986), p. 214. 3 David O’Shaughnessy, William Godwin and the Theatre (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2010), p. 14. 5 individual advancement (PJ, 118). Mee portrays the sociable Godwin and notes that he does ‘not want to reproduce the knee-jerk casting of Godwin as an automaton with no social skills found in much Romantic literary criticism.’4 He does also note, however, that due to his preference for smaller gatherings ‘Godwin was a sociable animal but within limits.’5 Mee traces Godwin’s experience and ideal from open conversation in the early-1790s, to polite conversation brought about by the climate of spying and surveillance in the mid-1790s, to a paranoid, claustrophobic post-1795 conversable world where Pitt’s government sought to constrict freedom of speech. He recognises that even in the domestic situation of Godwin, Wollstonecraft and their friend Hays, ‘numerous satirical representations of their conversations in the anti-Jacobin novels that flooded the press,’ intruded upon intimate space.6 If Mee’s study emphasises the importance to Godwin of conversation, the recent publication of Godwin’s letters helps chart his circles of notable acquaintance (GL). ‘Friendship forms the subject of many of the letters as Godwin gains, loses, and strives to maintain friends, and disciples, old and new.’7 It is therefore timely that my thesis illuminates the significance of Godwinian friendship. Godwin attended Hoxton Dissenting Academy during the years 1773-8, but remained relatively obscure until the publication of his treatise An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793) made him one of London’s most famous men of letters. He would achieve wider literary acclaim for his novels: Things As They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) is his most celebrated work, but St Leon, A Tale of 4 Jon Mee, Conversable Worlds: Literature, Contention and Community 1762-1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 144. 5 Ibid, p. 148. 6 Ibid, p. 166. 7 Emma Povall, 'Emma Povall reads The Letters of William Godwin, Volume II: 1798- 1805 (Oxford University Press, 2015) ed. by Pamela Clemit,' The Coleridge Bulletin, 48 (2016), 113-7 (p, 113). 6 the Sixteenth Century (1799) and Fleetwood: or the New Man of Feeling (1805) also helped to accredit him as a successful novelist. Godwin was a prolific writer and he also composed a number of well received essays, pamphlets, biographies and children’s books. Although his plays were less successful, his generic range is no less impressive. As O’Shaughnessy has noted: ‘Hazlitt’s assessment that Godwin “blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation” and that “no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after” is often cited but perhaps not adequately recognized in literary criticism.’8 Similarly, the significance of his theory of sociability has also been overlooked. Godwinian Friendship Godwin’s early interest in friendship was formed at dissenting academies where the ‘textual culture’ of free enquiry and the access to rational dissenting networks all helped to inspire the composition of his early manuscript ‘Notes on Friendship’.