William Godwin Popular Books

William Godwin Biography & Facts

William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published within the space of a year: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, an attack on political institutions, and Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, an early mystery novel which attacks aristocratic privilege. Based on the success of both, Godwin featured prominently in the radical circles of London in the 1790s. He wrote prolifically in the genres of novels, history and demography throughout his life. In the conservative reaction to British radicalism, Godwin was attacked, in part because of his marriage to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and his candid biography of her after her death from childbirth. Their daughter, later known as Mary Shelley, would go on to write Frankenstein and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. With his second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, Godwin set up The Juvenile Library, allowing the family to write their own works for children (sometimes using noms de plume) and translate and publish many other books, some of enduring significance. Godwin has had considerable influence on British literature and literary culture. Early life and education Godwin was born in Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, to John and Anne Godwin, becoming the seventh of his parents' thirteen children. Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class and his parents adhered to a strict form of Calvinism. Godwin's mother came from a wealthy family but due to her uncle's frivolities the family wealth was squandered. Fortunately for the family, her father was a successful merchant involved in the Baltic Sea trade. Shortly following William's birth, his father John, a Nonconformist minister, moved the family to Debenham in Suffolk and later to Guestwick in Norfolk, which had a radical history as a Roundhead stronghold during the English Civil War. At the local meeting house, John Godwin often found himself sitting in "Cromwell's Chair", which had been a gift to the town by the Lord Protector. William Godwin came from a long line of English Dissenters, who faced religious discrimination by the British government, and was inspired by his grandfather and father to take up the dissenting tradition and become a minister himself. At eleven years old, he became the sole pupil of Samuel Newton, a hard-line Calvinist and a disciple of Robert Sandeman. Although Newton's strict method of discipline left Godwin with a lasting anti-authoritarianism, Godwin internalized the Sandemanian creed, which emphasised rationalism, egalitarianism and consensus decision-making. Despite Godwin's later renunciation of Christianity, he maintained his Sandemanian roots, which he held responsible for his commitment to rationalism, as well as his stoic personality. Godwin later characterised Newton as, "... a celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." In 1771, Godwin was finally dismissed by Newton and returned home, but his father died the following year, which prompted his mother to urge him to continue his education. At seventeen years old, Godwin began higher education at the Dissenting Academy in Hoxton, where he studied under Andrew Kippis, the biographer, and Abraham Rees, who was responsible for the Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. A hotspot for classical liberalism, at the Academy, Godwin familiarized himself with John Locke's approach to psychology, Isaac Newton's scientific method and Francis Hutcheson's ethical system, which all informed Godwin's philosophies of determinism and immaterialism. Although Godwin had joined the Academy as a committed Tory, the outbreak of the American Revolution led him to support the Whig opposition and, after reading the works of Jonathan Swift, he became a staunch republican. He soon familiarised himself with the French philosophes, learning of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's belief in the inherent goodness of human nature and opposition to private property, as well as Claude Adrien Helvétius's utilitarianism and Paul-Henri Thiry's materialism. In 1778, Godwin graduated from the academy and was quickly appointed as a minister in Ware, where he met Joseph Fawcett, one of his main direct influences. By 1780, he had been reassigned to Stowmarket, where he first read Paul-Henri Thiry's System of Nature, adopting his philosophies of determinism and materialism. But after a conflict with other dissenting ministers of Suffolk over the administration of the eucharist, he stepped down and left for London in April 1782, resigning his career as a minister to become a writer. Early writing Throughout 1783, Godwin published a series of written works, beginning with an anonymously-published biography of William Pitt the Elder, followed by a couple of pro-Whig political pamphlets. He also briefly attempted to return to ministerial work in Beaconsfield, where he preached that "faith should be subordinated to reason". A few months later, during the opening of a seminary in Epsom, Godwin gave a politically-charged speech in which he denounced state power as "artificial" and exalted the libertarian potential of education, which he believed could bring an end to authoritarian governments. Godwin then worked for a spell as a satirical literary critic, publishing The Herald of Literature, in which he reviewed non-existent works by real authors, imitating their writing styles in lengthy quotations. His work on the Herald secured him further work as a critic for John Murray's English Review and a commission to translate Simon Fraser's memoirs. In 1784, he published the romantic novels Damon and Delia and Imogen, the latter of which was framed as a translation of a found manuscript from ancient Wales. That same year, he also published Sketches of History, which compiled six of his sermons about the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus. Drawing from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which depicted Satan as a rebel against his creator, Godwin denounced the Christian God as a theocrat and a tyrant that had no right to rule. As his early works were financially unsuccessful, in 1784, William Godwin hoped John Collins, a wealthy owner of a sugar plantation in St. Vincent would fund his writing. He did not succeed but the close connection between Godwin and members of the Collins family continued for fifty years. John Collin's eldest daughter Harriet de Boinville and William met seventy-two times between 1809 and 1827, and she championed Godwin's An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793) at her salons during that time period. In further attempts to earn money, Godwin started writi.... Discover the William Godwin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular William Godwin books.