Caleb Williams

A servant reads his master's face too well, guesses the secret of an old murder, and learns that a gentleman's reputation is a machine that can pursue a man across an entire country. Godwin was the most famous radical in England when he wrote it — later Mary Wollstonecraft's husband and Mary Shelley's father — and built the first thriller as an argument: things as they are, with the law belonging to whoever can pay for it. Fifty-eight plates after Reynolds, Gainsborough and their contemporaries, ranging from portraits of gentlemen and commoners to coastal shipping, give a face to a world where reputation is everything and the law belongs to the rich.