Cloudesley: a Tale, by the Author of "Caleb Williams"
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.
Price: $750.00
About the item
First edition. xiv, 274; [ii], 282; [ii], 345. Bound without ads in volumes I and III. 3 vols. 12mo. Contemporary quarter black calf and marbled boards. Endpapers foxed, upper joint of second volume repaired, otherwise a very nice copy. Front free endpapers bear the pencilled ownership inscription of James Wood. Wolff 2386.
Item #241070
Godwin's fifth novel, published when he was 74 years old. "Cloudesley is a story of deceit and usurpation, fraud and prolonged guilt; but, far more importantly, it is the story of how a man raises himself from crime to transcend not only his own past but the apparently inexorable laws of blood-relations and class divisions ... [it[ is the greatest example of a theme frequently returned to in Godwin's work, a theme obviously close to his heart: the ability of human beings to transcend the apparent logic of consanguinity and to form parental and filial relations with those to whom they are not related by blood." (Allen, Graham. "Cloudesley; A Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia).
