SOURCE: Harvey, A. D. “The Nightmare of Caleb Williams.” Essays in Criticism 26, no. 3 (July 1976): 236-49.

In the following essay, Harvey discusses the nightmarish setting of Godwin's novel, focusing on the vivid descriptions of corruption and oppression as well as the harsh fates to which the primary characters are subjected.

Although there has been some interesting recent work on William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams it can hardly be said to have received the recognition it deserves. It is too often dismissed as a ‘Philosophical Novel’, that is, a piece of inadequately dramatised preaching, and some commentators degrade it even further by seeing it merely as a curious pendant to Political Justice, the work Godwin completed just before starting the novel in 1793.¹

That Godwin himself considered Caleb Williams to be a novel of ideas, and in particular, an analysis of contemporary society, is shown by the full title under which...