William Godwin

The English political theorist and writer William Godwin (1756-1836) was a libertarian anarchist and utopian proponent of a natural, rational, secular society.

William Godwin, son of an Independent minister, was born on March 3, 1756, at Wisbeck, Cambridgeshire. Trained for the ministry at Hoxton Academy, a Dissenting college, he became a Sandemanian minister in East Anglia and the Home Counties from 1778 to 1783. The Sandemanians, a radical, fundamentalist sect expelled by the Presbyterians and accepted by the Independents, continued to influence Godwin's secular thought even after he became an atheist. In particular, he retained Sandemanian doctrines of communal property, of opposition to the authority of church and state, and of the progressive reform of individual character and conduct.

Godwin's earliest work, published anonymously, was a prospectus for a private school, An Account of the Seminary That Will Be Opened… in Surrey (1784). This revealed his characteristic belief in an egalitarian society which would form human nature through a continuous educational process, benevolently encouraging individual reason, justice, and moral law. Godwin developed these principles in his most important work, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793). In part a refutation of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1790), the Enquiry rejected property and power as just foundations for political society. Living in a time of rapid industrial development, Godwin longed for a simple communal economy in which individuals would progress indefinitely toward increasing rationality and equity.

Of Godwin's 35 other works the most important are The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), a social novel; The Enquirer (1797); History of the Commonwealth of England (1824); and Thoughts on Man (1831). He died in London on April 7, 1836.

Godwin's personal life seldom approached his philosophical ideals of individual nobility and generosity. In 1797 he married the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecroft, who died 6 months later. Left with an infant daughter, he married Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801. His life was rarely conventional, but he was outraged when his daughter, Mary, went to live with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley, long Godwin's financial supporter and committed disciple.

The influence of Godwin's writings on his younger contemporaries was considerable. Such disparate figures as the utopian socialist Robert Owen, the radical Francis Place, the socialist economist William Thompson, and even Karl Marx were impressed by Godwin's political and economic thought.

Further Reading

The two most acceptable studies of Godwin in the context of his time are George Woodcock, William Godwin (1946), and David Fleisher, William Godwin: A Study in Liberalism (1951). Other works include H. N. Brailsford, Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle (1913; 2d ed. 1954); Ford K. Brown, The Life of William Godwin (1926); and A. E. Rodway, ed., Godwin and the Age of Transition (1952). Godwin is placed in the tradition of anarchist thought in George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), a fine study of thought and society.

Additional Sources

Brown, Ford Keeler, The life of William Godwin, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1975; Philadelphia: R. West, 1977.

Grylls, R. Glynn (Rosalie Glynn), William Godwin & his world, Folcroft, Pa. Folcroft Library Editions, 1974.

Marshall, Peter H., William Godwin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.

Robinson, Victor, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1978.

Woodcock, George, William Godwin: a biographical study, Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975. □

William Godwin 1756–1836, English author and political philosopher. A minister in his youth, he was, however, plagued by religious doubts and gave up preaching in 1783 for a literary career. His Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) recorded the view that men are ultimately guided by reason and therefore, being rational creatures, could live in harmony without laws and institutions. His views are also reflected in his novels— Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), St. Leon (1799), and Fleetwood (1805). In 1797, Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft, who died the same year after giving birth to a daughter, Mary. He remarried in 1801 and in 1805 established a small, juvenile publishing business. His last years were an unceasing struggle against poverty and debt. Godwin's works strongly influenced his younger contemporaries, particularly Shelley , whose elopement with Mary (1814) drew from Godwin an exhibition of sternness at variance with his earlier views. However, he was later reconciled to their marriage.

Bibliography: See biographies by F. K. Brown (1926) and E. K. Paul (2 vol., 1896; repr. 1970); studies by H. N. Brailsford (2d ed. 1951), D. H. Munro (1953), J. P. Clark (1977), A. E. Rodway, ed. (1977), D. T. Hughes (1980), and M. Philp (1986).

Godwin, William (1756–1836), was at first a Dissenting minister, but became an atheist and philosopher of anarchical view. He believed that men acted according to reason and that rational creatures could live in harmony without laws or institutions. He married Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797; she died at the birth of their daughter Mary, the future wife of Shelley, and Godwin subsequently married Mrs Clairmont, whose daughter by her first marriage, Claire Clairmont, bore a daughter, Allegra, to Lord Byron.

Godwin produced in 1793 his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which he proclaimed that ‘Truth is omnipotent…Man is perfectible, or in other words susceptible of perpetual improvement’. In 1794 he published The Adventures of Caleb Williams. His life of Mary Wollstonecraft, Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, appeared in 1798; and there is a portrait of her in his novel St Leon (1799). He wrote several other novels (Fleetwood, 1805; Mandeville, 1817; Cloudesley, 1830; Deloraine, 1833) and a life of Chaucer (1803–4).

Godwin, William (1756–1836). English writer and novelist. In 1793 Godwin published his anarchist masterpiece Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which caught the public imagination and made his reputation. He argued against the use of coercion of any kind, whether political, ecclesiastical, or military, not because it violated natural rights, but because it was corrupting and counter-productive. Godwin was an extreme determinist, rejecting the idea of free will: indeed he asserted that the ‘assassin can no more help the murder he commits than the knife in his hand’. He claimed that the ills of society were due to the bad influences exerted on people, largely by governments, and that the path to improvement lay in the power of reason, not coercion. In the ideal society there would be no government and no punishment: individuals would live in harmony because of their mutual grasp of reason. In 1797 Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft, who died two years later giving birth to their daughter Mary, who married Shelley.

Tim S. Gray

Godwin, William (1756–1836) British social philosopher and novelist. At first a dissenting minister, he subsequently became an atheist and expounded theories of anarchic social organization based on a belief in the goodness of human reason and on his doctrine of extreme individualism. His ideological novel Caleb Williams (1794), which exposes the tyranny exercised by the ruling classes, was an early example of the crime and detection novel. In 1797 he married Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT, who died after giving birth to their daughter who became Mary Shelley.

Godwin, William (1756–1836). English writer and novelist. In 1793 Godwin published his anarchist masterpiece Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which caught the public imagination and made his reputation. He argued against the use of coercion of any kind, whether political, ecclesiastical, or military, because it was corrupting and counter‐productive. In the ideal society there would be no government and no punishment: individuals would live in harmony because of their mutual grasp of reason.