Love in the Time of Revolution

In 1798, English essayist and novelist William Godwin ignited a transatlantic scandal with Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Most controversial were the details of the romantic liaisons of Godwins wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, with both American Gilbert Imlay and Godwin himself. Wollstonecrafts life and writings became central to a continuing discussion about loves place in human society. Literary radicals argued that the cultivation of intense friendship could lead to the renovation of social and political institutions, whereas others maintained that these freethinkers were indulging their own desires with a disregard for stability and higher authority. Through correspondence and novels, Andrew Cayton finds an ideal lens to view authors, characters, and readers all debating loves power to alter men and women in the world around them.Cayton argues for Wollstonecrafts and Godwins enduring influence on fiction published in Great Britain and the United States and explores Mary Godwin Shelleys endeavors to sustain her mothers faith in romantic love as an engine of social change.