Sacred Secrets: Romantic Biography, Romantic Reform

Abstract

Acknowledges that most critics from the Romantic period to the present attack Godwin for the effect his biography of Mary Wollstonecraft had on her reputation. Argues, however, that there is more to this “mistake” than sheer social ineptitude or repressed hostility; by connecting Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of the Rights of Woman to a novel that influenced his understanding of radical reform, Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy, shows that Godwin understood the “indelicacies” in Wollstonecraft’s life as actions promoting social justice and saw his biography as participating in that project.