This is the first comprehensive account of one of the most extraordinary and influenctial families in the history of ideas. William Godwin's great treatise on liberalism, Political Justice, brought the ideas of the French Revolution to Britain. Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman marks the beginning of the modern women's movement.

Most lives follow a pattern of rise and fall. For William Godwin, writes William St Clair, there was not one peak but two. Just when Godwin's achievements seemed forgotten, the young Shelley burst into his life, claimed to be the heir to his ideas, ran off with his daughter Mary—author of Frankenstein—and tied the whole Godwin family inextricably to his own frantic career. Based on a thorough exploration of the vast family archives, The Godwins and the Shelleys sheds new light not only on an exceptional family but also on the history and literature of the revolutionary and romantic age.