William Godwin

William Godwin (1756-1836), English political philosopher and novelist, who, as a person and as a writer, exerted a profound influence on the younger authors of his time.

Godwin was born on March 3, 1756, in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. From 1777 to 1783 Godwin served as a minister of a dissenting religious sect. By 1785, however, he had become an atheist. In 1793 he wrote his best-known work, The Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, which expounded his theories of philosophical anarchism. Convinced of the individual perfection of human beings and their ability to reason, the author found all forms and degrees of control from without intolerable. His contempt for restrictions placed on one person by another or by a government also characterized one of his novels, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794).

In 1797 Godwin married the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after giving birth to their daughter, also named Mary Wollstonecraft, later the wife of the British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and an author in her own right. In 1801 Godwin married the widow Mary Jane Clairmont (died 1841). Establishing himself as a bookseller and publisher, he wrote several works for children and published others, notably Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by the British authors Mary Ann Lamb and her brother Charles Lamb. Godwin's business failed in 1822, at which time he devoted himself to writing The History of the Commonwealth of England (1824). His other writings include two series of essays, The Enquirer, Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature (1797) and Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries (1831). He died in London on April 7, 1836.