Caleb Williams or Things As They Are

Written by William Godwin

Narrated by LibriVox Community

The novel describes the downfall of Ferdinando Falkland, a British squire, and his attempts to ruin and destroy the life of Caleb Williams, a poor but ambitious young man that Falkland hires as his personal secretary. Caleb accidentally discovers a terrible secret in his master's past. Though Caleb promises to be bound to silence, Falkland, irrationally attached (in Godwin's view) to ideas of social status and inborn virtue, cannot bear that his servant should possibly have power over him, and sets out to use various means--unfair trials, imprisonment, pursuit, to make sure that the information of which Caleb is the bearer will never be revealed.
Godwin described the book as "a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities", so that Caleb Williams can be classified as an early thriller or mystery novel. (Summary from Wikipedia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

William Godwin

William Godwin (1756-1836) was an English political philosopher and novelist. Born to a middle-class Calvinist family, Godwin was raised by his mother following his father’s death. Encouraged to follow in his father’s footsteps as a minister, Godwin studied at Hoxton Academy under Andrew Kippis, Abraham Rees, and Robert Sandeman, influential nonconformist clergymen and theologians. While serving as a minister in the town of Ware, Godwin was introduced to the teachings of the French Encyclopédistes by Joseph Fawcett, a radical dissenter and proud republican. With this background in political philosophy, Godwin launched a career as a prominent intellectual who proposed the abolition of political, social, and religious institutions. His most influential work, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), is considered one of the earliest modern defenses of anarchism and elevated Godwin to the center of a national debate involving the British response to the French Revolution. The following year, Godwin published Caleb Williams; Or, Things as They Are (1794), a mystery novel based on the principles set forth in his popular work of political philosophy. In 1797, Godwin married English feminist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, having met her years earlier through Joseph Johnson, their mutual publisher. That year, Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth, leaving the infant and Fanny, her daughter from a previous marriage, in Godwin’s care. Remarrying in 1801, Godwin raised his daughter Mary—who later married Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote the novel Frankenstein (1818)—alongside his adopted children while running a bookshop and publishing house specializing in children’s literature.