Things as They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb Williams

Philadelphia: for H. and P. Rice, 1795. First American edition. [2], 228; [3]-224 pp. Without half titles. 2 vols. 8vo. Early half morocco and marbled boards. Small repair to head of spine. Very good. First American edition. [2], 228; [3]-224 pp. Without half titles. 2 vols. 8vo. Godwin's First Novel. Godwin's scarce first novel, written just after his ENQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE (1793), and "a near masterpiece, the finest work of fiction to appear in the long and prolific interval between the age of Richardson and the emergence of Jane Austen and Walter Scott." - St. Clair, THE GODWINS AND THE SHELLEYS.
The book was designed to show "the tyranny and perfidiousness exercised by the powerful members of the community against those who are less privileged than themselves," was a great popular success in Godwin's day, and provided the plot of successful play version. It is also a very early example of the novel of detection, "the latter carried out by the secretary of the suspected man, himself a recluse. there is much psychology (some of it shrewd and anticipatory of a later day), considerable drama (including blackmail frame-up, low life, and trial scene)..." - Barzun and Taylor
The American edition was published a year after the London edition. Godwin's work exercised a profound influence upon a generation of writers, in particular American Charles Brockden Brown, whose first four novels "are dramatic, suspenseful tales of crisis and psychological derangement that successfully combine the conventions of British 'Jacobin' fiction (the progressive fiction associated with Godwin), and of Gothic, seduction, and picaresque, or adventure, novels with an emphasis on the period's deepest social and political anxieties" (ANB).
Attractive copy of a scarce book. Evans 28752; ESTC W28047