[3] Caleb Williams, a poor, self-educated, orphaned young man, and the novel's first-person narrator, is recommended for a job on the estate of the wealthy Ferdinando Falkland.

In the wilderness, Caleb is robbed by a band of criminals, physically attacked by one in particular, and then rescued by a different man who takes him to the headquarters of this same group of thieves.

Falkland, now aged, gaunt, and frail, claims that he deliberately did not show up in court, so that he could persuade Caleb to put in writing that his accusations are unfounded.

Despite his noble pursuit of justice, though, Caleb is not contented, believing his success a hollow one and holding himself responsible for Falkland's death.

Caleb concludes with an explanation that the point of the book is merely to straighten out the details of Falkland's turbulent history, rather than to condemn the man.

The surviving holograph manuscript for Caleb Williams is held in the Forster Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, along with several other works by Godwin.

In 1859 the texts for Political Justice, Caleb Williams, Life of Chaucer, and History of the Commonwealth of England were all acquired by John Forster, who died in 1876.

Published in 1794, William Godwin chose the date of publication as 12 May, the same day the Prime Minister had suspended habeas corpus to begin mass arrests of suspected radicals.

The subject matter, in combination with the political climate upon release, resulted in an extreme divergence of opinion regarding Caleb Williams.

One review from the British Critic in July 1794 stated, "This piece is a striking example of the evil use which may be made of considerable talents…every gentleman is a hard-hearted assassin, or a prejudiced tyrant; every Judge is unjust, every Justice corrupt and blind.

These critics saw Caleb Williams as attacking the current established order, that Godwin was effectively spreading his "evil" principles throughout society.

The same critic states, "When a work is so directly pointed at every band which connects society, and at every principle which renders it amiable, its very merits become noxious as they tend to cause its being known in a wider circle."

Another reviewer from the British Critic wrote in April 1795, "a Philosopher has invented a Fable for the purpose of attacking the moral and political prejudices of his countrymen, and in all the instances in which he has affected to state the law of the land, and to reason from it, has stated it falsely; and it is almost superfluous to say, that in so doing, he has outraged Philosophy, Reason, and Morality, the foundation, object, and end of which is Truth.

"[citation needed] Anthony Trollope gave a lecture in 1870, published as On English Prose Fiction ..., which included: "[Caleb Williams has been] the subject of eulogies which I cannot understand ...

It was written to depict the agony of one who suffered innocently from the despotic power of the English aristocracy, and is intended as a denunciation of the injustice of the time.

Ford K. Brown writes in his biography of Godwin, The Life of William Godwin, of a story in which a young boy finds out he just missed the author of Caleb Williams and "with true genuine enthusiasm, falling suddenly on his knees, reverently kissed the chair which the philosopher had just quitted, rapturously thanking heaven that he might now say he had been in company with the author of the best novel in the English, or in any language".

The review includes an immensely flattering description of Godwin and his writing of Caleb Williams: "he was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice was the theme, his name was not far off—now he has sunk below the horizon, and enjoyed the serene twilight of a doubtful immortality."

To evade a censorship ban on presenting the novel on the stage, the impresario Richard Brinsley Sheridan presented the piece on the stage of his Drury Lane Theatre in 1796 under the title The Iron Chest, his pretext for avoiding censorship being that his resident composer Stephen Storace had made an "operatic version" of the story.

Mick Ford starred as Caleb Williams in a successful TV-miniseries (German-French-Swiss-Austrian-British-Italian co-production of 1980) by Herbert Wise with a special soundtrack by Hans Posegga.