Cloudesley: A Tale is the fifth novel published by eighteenth-century philosopher and novelist William Godwin

William Godwin

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...

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Publication details

Cloudesley was published thirteen years after Mandeville, Godwin's fourth novel, and two years after the completion of his four-volume History of the Commonwealth of England. He was 74 when Cloudesley was issued.

Plot and themes

According to the literary scholar Graham Allen, "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." He argues that Cloudesley "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."