The son of a clergyman, William Godwin was educated at Hoxton academy; he was a dissenting minister before moving to London and taking up a career as a political writer and radical philosopher, sometimes publishing under the pseudonyms "Edwin Baldwin" and Theophilus Marcliffe." Godwin made his reputation with An Inquiry into Political Justice (1793) and the novel Caleb Williams (1794). Godwin also published a four-volume biography of Chaucer and a frank memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. Percy Bysshe Shelley, who married their daughter, regarded Godwin as his philosophical mentor.
TEXT RECORDS:
1784Inkle and Yariko, a Poem, by James Beattie, L.L.D. 4to.
PUBLICATIONS:
An account of the seminary that will be opened ... at Epsom. 1783.
A defence of the Rockingham party. 1783.
History of the life of William Pitt. 1783.
The herald of literature. 1784.
Six sermons. 1784.
An enquiry concerning the principles of political justice. 1793, 1796.
The enquirer; reflections on education, manners, and literature. 1797.
Things as they are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams. 3 vols, 1794.
Memoirs of the author of A vindication [Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin]. 1798.
St Leon, a tale of the sixteenth century. 4 vols, 1799.
Antonio: a tragedy. 1800.
Thoughts occasioned by Dr. Parr's Spital sermon. 1801.
The life of Geoffrey Chaucer. 2 vols, 1803; 4 vols, 1804.
Fleetwood, or the new man of feeling. 1805.
Faulkener, a tragedy. 1807.
Essay on sepulchres. 1809.
The lives of Edward and John Phillips. 1809.
The letters of Verax, to the Morning Chronicle. 1815.
Of population ... being an answer to Mr. Malthus. 1820.
History of the Commonwealth of England. 4 vols, 1824-28.
Mandeville, a tale of the seventeenth century. 3 vols, 1817.
Letter of advice to a young American. 1818.
Cloudsly, a tale. 1830.
Thoughts on man. 1831.
Deloraine. 3 vols, 1833.
Lives of the necromancers. 1834.
Essays ... never before published. 1873.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
dissenter
Hoxton Academy
Dissenting academy
clergyman
book trade
essayist
novelist
dramatist
Monthly Mirror
The Monthly Magazine
English Review
Dr. John Aikin
Thomas Campbell
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
John Payne Collier
William Hazlitt
Thomas Holcroft
Leigh Hunt
John Keats
Charles Lamb
Sir James Mackintosh
Amelia Opie
Rev. David Rivers
Joseph Ritson
Mary Robinson
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Horace Smith
John Thelwall
John Horne Tooke
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; DLB.
Catalogue of five hundred Celebrated Authors (1788); David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); "William Godwin" Monthly Mirror 19 (January-February 1805) 5-7, 85-93 [portrait]; Biographia Dramatica (1812); Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816); "An Estimate of the Literary Character of Mr. William Godwin" Monthly Magazine 45 (May 1818) 299-302; "Living Authors: Godwin: chiefly as a Writer of Novels" London Magazine 2 (August 1820) 163-69; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); William Hazlitt, "William Godwin" in Spirit of the Age (1825); A New Biographical Dictionary of 3000 Cotemporary Public Characters (1825); "Mr. Godwin's Novels" Fraser's Magazine 2 (November 1830) 381-96; The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Allan Cunningham, "Literature of the last Fifty Years" The Athenaeum (16 November 1833) 774; William Maginn, "Gallery of Literary Characters: William Godwin, Esq." Fraser's Magazine 10 (October 1834) 463 [portrait]; W. B. Morgan, obituary in Gentleman's Magazine NS 5 (June 1836) 666-70; Thomas De Quincey, "Literary Reminiscences" (1837; in Works 1889-90); George Gilfillan, in Gallery of Literary Portraits (1845) [portrait]; Thomas Constable, in Archibald Constable and his Literary Correspondents (1873); Charles Kegan Paul, William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols (1876); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); Margaret Oliphant, Literary History of England (1882); Maclise Gallery (1898); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); Ford Keeler Brown, Life of William Godwin (1926); R. G. Grylls, William Godwin and his World (1953); Renwick, OHEL (1963); Burton Ralph Pollin, "Verse Satire on William Godwin in the Anti-Jacobin Period" Satire Newsletter 2 (1963) 31-40; A. N. L. Munby, Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons (1971-75); William St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: a Biography of a Family (1989).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for William Godwin:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for William Godwin:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
1. | 1797 Henry Fielding: William Godwin, in "Of English Style" The Enquirer (1797) 462-63. |
2. | 1797 Samuel Richardson: William Godwin, in "Of Choice in Reading" The Enquirer (1797) 134-35. |
3. | 1797 Tobias Smollett: William Godwin, "Of English Style" The Enquirer (1797) 467. |
4. | 1797 Rev. Jonathan Swift: William Godwin, in "Of English Style" The Enquirer (1797) 443. |
5. | 1797 Sir William Temple: William Godwin, in "Of English Style" The Enquirer (1797) 419. |
6. | 1818 David Hume: William Godwin, in Letter of Advice to a Young American on the Course of Studies (1818) 13. |
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(biography records)
1. | 1805 Joseph Ritson: William Godwin, "Biographical Sketch of Ritson" in The Monthly Mirror (May 1805) 291-94. |