The Prefaces of William Godwin and the Literary Public Sphere

Abstract

The preface as a genre exists in a liminal stage between non-fiction and fiction. Here the author, whether to an historical account, philosophical treatise, or novel, writes in a voice that the reader assumed to be sincere and genuine. However, the preface has historically been a participant in the nexus between marketplace and public sphere. The literary career of William Godwin, poised as it is in a period that witnessed the establishment and entrenchment of the novel as a genre and the appearance of the critic accompanying the burgeoning critical journal, provides a significant position to witness the development of a nineteenth-century literary public sphere. Godwin himself is caught between these two movements, and thus his prefaces are complicated and not always what they seem. If his periodical writings are primarily political in nature, his prefaces can be seen as a proto-poetics of the novel, concerned not only with the ontological nature of the genre but with pragmatic concerns as well. As David McCracken concisely states, Godwin “consider[s] the relation between reason and imagination, the status of the novel as a genre, its potential effects on the novel-reading public, its elements and construction, and the hazards of combining political philosophy and fiction.” The preface was the platform for these considerations. First drawing on the conventional rhetoric of the preface, he aligns his work with the mechanics of the marketplace, but read in concert with the reviews, it is clear that he has in mind the more idealized nature of the literary public sphere. This paper analyzes the rhetoric in Godwin’s prefaces, primarily of his novels, and contextualizes them within the discourse of the critical reviews to demonstrate how Godwin posits a literary public sphere in which his novels can function as political documents.