Possibilities of past and future: Republican history in William Godwins Mandeville

This paper considers Godwins employment of historical fiction to intervene in the post-revolution debate, arguing that Mandeville appears as a significant counter to the popular model of fiction and history developed b y Scottin the 1810s. Although reviewers tended to focus primarily on the psychological aspect of the novel, commonly associating Godwins exploration of the darker passions with the work of Byron, the paper contends that, like Godwins History of the Commonwealth, Mandeville also represented an attempt to revive the intellectual and republican energies of the seventeenthcentury past, and preserve a view of republican political possibility in the wake of Waterloo.