Cloudesley is Godwin’s fifth novel, published thirteen years after Mandeville, his fourth; Godwin had celebrated his 74th birthday the day before it appeared. The novel, like most of Godwin’s other novels, was composed and published after the completion of an important work of non-fiction, Godwin’s Four Volume, History of the Commonwealth of England, published between 1824 and 1828. Mary Shelley, Godwin’s daughter, reviewed the novel in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, XXVII in May 1830. Comparing Godwin’s novels to those of Walter Scott and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, she writes: “Of all modern writers, Mr Godwin has arrived most sedulously, and most successfully, at the highest species of p…
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Citation: Allen, Graham. "Cloudesley ; A Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 September 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5984, accessed 04 December 2024.]