William Godwin

William Godwin 3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836 was an English journalist, political philosopher in addition to novelist. He is considered one of the number one exponents of utilitarianism together with the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is nearly famous for two books that he published within a 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 gave 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 component 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 so-called as Mary Shelley, would go on to write Frankenstein and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. With hiswife, Mary Jane Clairmont, Godwin types up The Juvenile Library, allowing the variety to write their own working for children sometimes using noms de plume and translate and publish numerous 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 in the 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 score 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 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. John never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age.

William Godwin came from a long line 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 supports his Sandemanian roots, which he held responsible for his commitment to rationalism, as living 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 target home, but his father died the coming after or as a solution of. year, which prompted his mother to urge him to come on his education.

At seventeen years old, Godwin began Paul-Henri Thiry's materialism.

In 1778, Godwin graduated from the academy and was quickly appointed as a minister in Paul-Henri Thiry's System of Nature, adopting his philosophies of determinism and materialism. But after a clash with other dissenting ministers of Suffolk over the supervision of the eucharist, he stepped down and left for London in April 1782, resigning his career as a minister to become a writer.