William Godwin was a controversial British thinker and philosopher whose radical and anarchistic beliefs reflected the idea that all monarchies were "unavoidably corrupt" and that no person should have power over another. He objected to most social institutions, including marriage and the accumulation of private property, and believed that society could solve its problems only through rational discussion and reason.
Godwin was born to John Godwin and Ann Hull Godwin. As a child, he was precocious, and he had read Bunyan's work Pilgrim's Progress by the time he was five. At eleven, Godwin studied under Reverend Samuel Newton, a member of a strict sect of Calvanists who taught that men are depraved and that reason was the only basis for action. Godwin then went to Hoxton Academy until 1778, where he studied under Alexander Kippis. Upon leaving Hoxton, Godwin served as a candidate minister in Christchurch, Ware, and Stowmarket. Ultimately failing at the ministry, he began a career as a writer in 1782 on the recommendation of Joseph Fawcett, a poet and preacher. Godwin's thought was a product of his constant reading, both during school and after he completed his studies. He was influenced by Jonathan Swift and of the French philosophers of the 1700s, called the philosophes.
His writing career began with a biography of William Pitt in 1783, and a novel Damon and Delia (1784). Godwin's major work An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (1793) was steeped in ancient historians, philosophers such as John Locke and Joseph Priestly, and Jonathan Swift. This extensive work expresses the theoretical basis for Godwin's philosophy and later writing. In it, Godwin explores man's social nature, his relationship with government, and individual rights. It seeks to define the appropriate scope of the government and considers the problem of crime and punishment. In the radical vein, he speaks against the rights to own private property and marriage. In this work, Godwin puts forth his belief in man's ability to become perfect and his idea that government is a barrier to happiness and reform comes as the result of reason.
Godwin was writing at a time marked by hot political debate and agitation for reform, and he was highly respected by other intellectuals. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice marked Godwin's literary peak, after which he wrote an extremely successful novel entitled Things as They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams. In spite of his open condemnation of social institutions, in 1796 Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and an early feminist. She died as a result of giving birth to their daughter, Mary (ultimately the author of Frankenstein), in 1797. After publishing a controversially revealing biography of his wife, Godwin turned to writing essays and another novel.
After 1797, Godwin's radical thought was roundly criticized when the country took a conservative turn. Throughout the early 1800s, the political climate did not provide Godwin a forum for his views. He wrote a life of Chaucer that was well accepted and also children's literature for a new publishing venture, the Juvenile Library, under the assumed names of Edward Baldwin and Theophilus Marcliffe. In the later years of his life, Godwin wrote on the political and religious developments during the Civil War in England in Mandeville. He also wrote History of the Commonwealth of England, a four volume work that is noted as the first scholarly history of the nation written from the republican point of view. Though his ideas fell out of fashion, Godwin's own thought in turn influenced such English Romantics of the early 1800s as Percy Bysshe Shelley. He also influenced the socialists and the labor movement and is recognized as one of the first outspoken proponents of radical philosophical anarchism.
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