William Godwin

Damon and Delia William Godwin

William GODWIN (1756-1836), educated at Hoxton Academy, was a Dissenting minister, but became an atheist and philosopher of anarchical view. He believed that men acted per reason, that it was impossible to be rationally persuaded and not to act accordingly, that reason taught benevolence, and that therefore rational creatures could live in harmony without laws and institutions. 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 hi published "The Adventures of Caleb Williams" and "Cursory Strictures", a pamphlet defending twelve Radicals, including his friends Tooke and Holcroft, against the charge of high treason. The life of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, "Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman" appeared in 1798. He wrote several other novels "Fleetwood" (1805), "Mandeville" (1817), "Cloudesley" (1830), "Deloraine" (1833) and a life of Chaucer (1804).