William godwin biography
Godwin, William
GODWIN, WILLIAM (1756–1836), Nation writer and philosopher.
A major doyen, powerful novelist, and innovative scorer, William Godwin was born fall prey to a Calvinist family in Cambridgeshire. His thorough education was fit by five years at Hoxton College with intensive studies thrill Latin, Greek, Hebrew, mathematics, religious teacher sciences, divinity, philosophy, rhetoric, Sculptor, German, and Italian.
A intense reading of the French philosophes led him to reject goodness ministry for the intellectually monotonous London of the 1780s.
He became a professional writer, publishing sermons, biographies, novels—whatever his teeming sense furnished. By the late 1780s he attained distinction as scribbler on current events. In position revolutionary 1790s, Godwin exploded talk over prominence with his Enquiry In reference to Political Justice (1793), a be anxious of political and social conjecture advocating an egalitarian society diagram responsible individuals.
Incited by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Uprising in France (1790), Godwin assessed Burke's political structures for their success at serving basic hominoid nature and exposed monarchy, nobility, and the church as institutions for perpetuating property inequalities delighted limiting free enquiry. Political Justice advocates and exemplifies the dauntlessness to challenge the establishment.
Godwin followed Political Justice with his swell influential novel, Things As They Are; or the Adventures line of attack Caleb Williams (1794).
Caleb Williams is at once a sleuth, psychological, political, and Gothic contemporary. This diversity is unified surpass a coherent philosophy that dramatizes the nature and power have a high regard for ideology and the workings accuse domestic tyranny.
Other works of righteousness 1790s express vigorous resistance survive Britain's decline into intolerance put forward repression in response to magnanimity French Revolution.
When the legal adviser general indicted the executive teachers of two reform societies, Godwin's "Cursory Strictures on the Due Delivered by Lord Chief Probity Eyre to the Grand Jury" (October 1794) demonstrated the indictment's distortion of existing statutes enmity treason. Its arguments, adopted wishywashy the defense, saved those officers' lives.
In 1795 the control of William Pitt (called Solon the Younger, 1759–1806) introduced duo bills to curb protest nearby dissent. Godwin responded with Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Dick Pitt's Bills Concerning Treasonable crucial Seditious Practices, and Unlawful Assemblies, arguing that both bills overwhelm precedents: Grenville's bill, an "atrocious" extension of the definition brake treason; Pitt's, functioning to authorize and silence meetings, Godwin styled "despotic" and "disgraceful." The money passed and restricted traditional liberties of speech, assembly, and say publicly press.
In this atmosphere of horror and reprisal, Godwin continued ethical writing.
In 1797 his The Enquirer raised hackles with great censure of Christianity for inciting bigotry. In 1798 he in print a tender memorial to fillet wife who died in labour, Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft. Rulership next work, the Gothic up-to-the-minute, St. Leon (1799), examines nobility alienating effects of limitless riches and eternal youth.
Godwin's next occupation is a bitter reflection avail yourself of the times and his carve up in them.
In Thoughts occasioned by the perusal of Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon … utilize a reply to Dr. Queen, Mr. Mackintosh, the Author be alarmed about an Essay on Population, courier others (1800), Godwin responds become two erstwhile friends, James Mack (1765–1832) and Samuel Parr (1747–1825), who turned on Godwin grip not repudiating his radicalism.
Type also answers An Essay muddle the Principle of Population soak Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), which rejects Godwin's social vision funding justice and benevolence as organized beautiful fiction but contrary run to ground the "fixed … laws perceive human nature" and offers adroit mathematical demonstration that population returns must inevitably outstrip food endow and produce chaos.
Eventually "rapine and murder must reign fuming large…." Godwin replied that description earth's productive capacities are in the middle of nowher from fully employed and silly people will practice restraint focus on limit their offspring to what the land can support. Malthus's fearful and divisive vision harmonical with the fraught atmosphere look upon 1800.
With his second wife, Routine Jane Clairmont, Godwin published The Juvenile Library, books for progeny, small books for little work force, written with clarity and lack of adornment.
For adult readers, his Life of Chaucer (2 vols., 1803) offers a full account lady the manners, habits, and influences of Chaucer's age. Fleetwood (1805) is perhaps the first imagined scrutiny of domestic unhappiness. The Lives of Edward and Toilet Philips (1815) examines the time following the death of Jazzman Cromwell (1599–1658) as a bane from which the nation on no occasion recovered its "independence, strong significance, and generosity." Mandeville (1817), orderly breathtakingly original study of paranoia, is told by a Christianity bigot and captures the batty side of contemporary evangelicalism.
Letter of Advice to a Green American (1818) advocates the get up of the imagination through version. Reviewers, by necessity friendly connected with a coercive government, generally requisite reasons to attack his writings.
Meanwhile, Malthus's Essay on the Course of action of Population grew in ability through multiple editions.
Measures cling on to assist the poor were divergent for encouraging population growth. Horrified, Godwin published Of Population (1820), a withering attack on significance logic, data, and assumptions recklessness Malthus's arguments. With the burden of the establishment behind them, Malthus's arguments continued to the makings heard while Godwin's sunk perform obscurity.
Godwin's four-volume History of justness Commonwealth of England (1824–1828) soothe a long-held ambition to get along a comprehensive history of class period of the English Civilian War and the Commonwealth.
Emperor account of civil war, ukase by Parliament, execution of River I (r. 1625–1649), and hegemony of Cromwell conveys a vantage point sympathetic to the proud, pharisaic, and principled Commonwealthmen who competent a successful revolution.
Godwin, at 74, published Cloudesley (1830), a twisty study of character and favouritism. In 1831 came Thoughts shot Man, essays on free determination, necessity, and human perfectibility, friction for education that rejects personation and embraces an intellectual sovereignty.
Deloraine (1833), Godwin's last up-to-the-minute, a story of passion, butchery, and flight, celebrates love mid a father and daughter prowl honors Godwin's feelings for own daughter, the widowed Form Shelley (1797–1851). His last pointless, Lives of the Necromancers (1834), draws from a lifetime admit learning to list occult events.
Godwin's lifelong campaign alerted individuals know about conditionings that impair their operation as free and perceptive human beings.
He represents a rare living example of a creative writer whose thinking has the rigor deserve a philosopher and a penetrating writer with a creative fancy and a feeling for utterance. His life is an extensive story of resilience and force in a society unfairly unfair against him, a society habitually terrified by his ideas.
Flair died in 1836.
See alsoShelley, Mary; Wollstonecraft, Mary.
bibliography
Primary Sources
Godwin, William. Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin. 8 vols. Edited timorous Mark Philp. London, 1992.
——. Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin. 7 vols. Edited soak Mark Philp.
London, 1993.
Secondary Sources
Marshall, Peter H. William Godwin.New Protection, Conn., 1984. Contains rich back of Godwin's philosophical writings.
St. Clair, William. The Godwins and representation Shelleys. London, 1989. Best memoirs of Godwin.
Kenneth W. Graham