For his children’s books, Godwin employed several pen
names, one of which both clutters the tongue and arouses amusement: Theophilus
Marcliffe. Godwin put Marcliffe’s name on The
Looking Glass (1805), and The Life of
Lady Jane Grey (1806). “Edward Baldwin” appeared on a number of other
volumes, including The History of England
(1806), The Pantheon (1806), and The History of Rome (1809).
He also used yet a third name—William Frederic Mylius
(sometimes just W. F. Mylius)—which appeared on a few titles, some of which are
not positively identified as Godwin’s work, including Mylius’s School Dictionary of the English Language (1809—a volume
that would go through numerous editions) and The Poetical Class-Book; or, Reading Lessons for Every Day of the Year,
selected from the Most Popular English Poets, Ancient and Modern (1810).
We know that his daughter Mary was among the first
readers of many of these works—and that he was surely thinking of her—and of
other children like her—when he conceived and composed them.
The last one he wrote as Edward Baldwin (or as anyone
else other than William Godwin) was History
of Greece, a book he began in 1809 but did not complete until 1821. I
discovered just now in my files the folder I’d set aside for this book. I have
a photocopy of the entire thing, a copy I’d made during one of my numerous Shelley-related
trips down to the Cleveland Public Library, which has an 1822 edition of the
book on microfilm. History of Greece,
I see on the title page, cost five
shillings at the time.
I think how research has become so much easier now. I
just checked online and found several digital copies of the book. Were I
working on this project now, I would not have to leave my house, drive to the
Shaker Rapid on Green Road, ride down to Tower City, walk to the Cleveland
Public Library, request the microfilm, load it on a reader, drop a dime into
the machine for each page I wanted to print, walk back to Tower City, ride the
Rapid to Green Road, drive home. No, nowadays I could just print it right where
I sit—maybe catch up on Facebook while the printer is churning out the pages—that
is, if I even wanted a physical copy
of the book. No need, really. In fact I just this moment downloaded and saved
on my desktop a .pdf of the entire book. Took under thirty seconds.[1]
Anyway, in his preface (writing in the voice of
Baldwin), Godwin says he now takes his
final leave of the class of young persons, for whose amusement and instruction
his publications were intended. He ends with a touching sentence: He well knows the motives, warm and
inextinguishable as they are in his heart, from which these works have derived
their being …. He’d written those books for money, of course—but also for
his own children—and, in some ways, especially for Mary. His preface is dated
November, 1821.
But by that time his beloved daughter Mary, now in her
mid-twenties, had left his home and had shattered his heart.
[1] All
of Godwin’s books are now in digital form. Check this website: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
No comments:
Post a Comment