Abstract: Socio-political debates in the heated atmosphere of the late 18th century in Britain predominantly centred on questions of representation and the extension of human rights to ordinary citizens. Landed property lay at the heart of these debates given that landownership was intimately fused with the recognition of individuals as independent legal subjects and thus as citizens proper. To further increase the luxury and influence of the rich, vast amounts of common land had been systematically enclosed for centuries, essentially erasing the livelihoods of those who depended on the free employment of the common heath for their survival. The processes of enclosure, both in the literal and figural senses of landgrabbing and obstruction of autonomy, not only catalysed the creation of early working-class associations such as the London Corresponding Society, but also prompted Jacobin writers such as philosophical anarchist William Godwin to denounce the exploitative practices of the super-rich in his novel ‘Imogen, A Pastoral Romance from the Ancient British’ (1784). Foreshadowing Godwin’s later involvement in the Revolution Debate and the Treason Trials of the 1790s, the work negotiates rights to political participation, property, and personal integrity, while pointedly relaying the abominable practices of rich landowners to subjugate their inferiors. The eponymous heroine’s resourcefulness nonetheless contrasts with widespread female suffering in systems of patriarchal tyranny and thereby sparks hope for improvement. In consequence, the text is understood as an early example of socio-political criticism and active intervention in the systematic oppression of the marginalised at the hands of the despotic super-rich.

Keywords: property rights, 18th-century radicalism, enclosure, making the legal subject