William Godwin (1756 - 1836)

Born 3 Mar 1756 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England

Ancestors

Husband of Mary (Wollstonecraft) Godwin — married 29 Mar 1797 in St Pancras, Middlesex, England

Descendants

Died 7 Apr 1836 at age 80 in London, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

William Godwin is Notable.

William Godwin is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin was attacked because of his marriage to the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and his candid biography of her after her death. Their daughter, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) would go on to write Frankenstein and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Godwin was born in Wisbech in Cambridgeshire to John and Anne Godwin. William Godwin was educated for his father's profession at Hoxton Academy. His first published work was an anonymous Life of Lord Chatham (1783). His literary method, as he described it in the introduction to the novel, also proved influential: Godwin began with the conclusion of Caleb being chased through Britain, and developed the plot backwards. Dickens and Poe both commented on Godwin's ingenuity in doing this.

Sources

Godwin, William. Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin, 8 volumes, Mark Philp (ed.). London: Pickering and Chatto Publishers Ltd., 1992.

Godwin, William. An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. London: G. G. & J. Robinson, 1793.

Godwin, William. The Antichrist Writings of William Godwin. Peter Marshall (ed.). Freedom Press, 1986.

Godwin, William. History of the Commonwealth of England from its commencement to its restoration, 4 volumes, London: H. Colburn, 1824–8. Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions, and Discoveries. Interspersed with some particulars respecting the author, London: Effingham Wilson, 1831.

Godwin, William. Essays, Never before published, by the late William Godwin, C. Kegan Paul (ed.). London: H.S. King, 1873.

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. [pp. 13, 93-94, 105-115, 230]

Monro, D.H. Godwin’s Moral Philosophy: An Interpretation of William Godwin. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1953.

Paul, Charles Kegan. William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries. 2 volumes. London: H. S. King, 1876.

Philp, Mark. Godwin’s Political Justice, London: Duckworth, 1986.

Philip, Mark. "William Godwin." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/

Thomas, Richard Grough. William Godwin: A Political Life. Pluto Press, 2019.

Werde, Ralph M., ed. Godwin and Mary: The Letters of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. University of Nebraska Press, 1977.

Woodcock, George. William Godwin: A Biographical Study. London: Porcupine Press, 1946.

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