Biographical Information
The seventh of thirteen children, Godwin was born in Wisbeach, England, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife. Raised in a strict, puritanical environment, Godwin trained for the ministry at an early age and became a Sandemanian clergyman in 1777. However, after studying the French revolutionary philosophers, he grew disenchanted with religion and eventually became an atheist. Leaving the church in 1783, Godwin moved to London, intending to make his living as an author. He began writing pamphlets and literary parodies, most of them published anonymously. Against the backdrop of revolution in France and the repression of seditious writings and speech in Britain, he produced Political Justice, which met with immediate success. Although its primary appeal was to intellectuals, it also found its way into the hands of the working class. A year later Godwin addressed that audience more directly with the publication of Caleb Williams, which he claimed to have written for people who would never read books of science or philosophy.
Godwin was already an established and influential writer and radical when in 1796 he met Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), an attack on society's treatment of women.
This is a free page. This page contains 171 words. This
article contains 13,410 words (approx. 45 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our William Godwin - (1756 - 1836) Access Pass.
