William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary

By Peter Marshall and John P. Clark

William Godwin has long been known for his literary connections as the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the father of Mary Shelley, the friend of Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt, the mentor of the young Wordsworth, Southey, and Shelley, and the opponent of Malthus. Godwin has been recently recognized, however, as the most capable exponent of philosophical anarchism, an original moral thinker, a pioneer in socialist economics and progressive education, and a novelist of great skill.

His long life straddled two centuries. Not only did he live at the center of radical and intellectual London during the French Revolution, he also commented on some of the most significant changes in British history. Shaped by the Enlightenment, he became a key figure in English Romanticism.

Basing his work on extensive published and unpublished materials, Peter Marshall has written a comprehensive study of this flamboyant and fascinating figure. Marshall places Godwin firmly in his social, political, and historical context; he traces chronologically the origin and development of Godwin’s ideas and themes; and he offers a critical estimate of his works, recognizing the equal value of his philosophy and literature and their mutual illumination.

The picture of Godwin that emerges is one of a complex man and a subtle and revolutionary thinker, one whose influence was far greater than is usually assumed. In the final analysis, Godwin stands forth not only as a rare example of a man who excelled in both philosophy and literature but as one of the great humanists in the Western tradition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PM Press
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781629634005

Peter Marshall

Peter Marshall is a historian, philosopher, biographer and travel writer. He has written fifteen books, has taught at several British universities and occasionally works in broadcasting. He lives in Devon.

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Praise for

William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary

‘Marshall steers his course … with unfailing sensitivity and skill. It is hard to see how the task could have been better done.’

—Michael Foot, Observer, ‘Book of the Year’

‘The best biography of Godwin for more than a century … Marshall tells us as much about Godwin as we are likely to want to know and also makes us want to read him.’

—Nicolas Walter, Spectator

‘Marshall writes as an unashamed Godwinian … He has written a fluent combination of biography and critical study in which the two aspects are well balanced, and, while William Godwin is unlikely to be superseded by another biography for some time, it will form an excellent starting point for further critical consideration of Godwin, that strange man so dramatically rescued from oblivion.’

—George Woodcock, Our Generation

‘Excellent study of the life and works of William Godwin … Well written and extensively researched … the most comprehensive and richly detailed work yet to appear on Godwin as thinker, writer, and person…. The author’s scholarship is exemplary … For the reader who wishes to comprehend many sides of this intriguing figure, and to understand his considerable historical significance, this work will be an invaluable source of illumination.’

—John P. Clark, Criticism

‘Vast and richly detailed’

—Colin Ward, Times Educational Supplement

‘A labour of love, a magnificent scholarly undertaking which must long remain the standard work on the subject.’

—Gregory Clayes, Historical Journal

‘Admirable … Marshall certainly deserves to be praised for writing a major work of scholarship on an important and fascinating man.’

—H. T. Dickinson, Times Higher Educational Supplement

‘Peter Marshall’s handsome and substantial biography [is] … authoritative and up-to-date … comprehensive and scholarly’.

—Don Locke, Times Literary Supplement

‘A wholly successful attempt to trace the evolution and importance of Godwin’s thought … A fascinating biography … amply and entertainingly told, though it always takes second place to Peter Marshall’s noble aim, which is to do Godwin critical justice.’

—Nigel Cross, New Statesman

‘Peter Marshall’s biography is rich in interesting history … of a good-hearted writer’.

—D.A.N. Jones, London Review of Books

‘Fully confirms Godwin’s reputation as the first and most capable exponent of anarchism, as a major figure in the development of utilitarianism, and as a pioneer in socialist economics and progressive education.’

—The Scotsman

‘No really first-rate biography has been done before this one. The task requires an enormous command of early modern English history, extensive familiarity with the lives and works of early relevant writers and public figures of the period, peculiar narrative skill in tracing the sharp rise and fall of Godwin’s star, and special perspicuity and tact in dealing with relations between what happened to Godwin, what he wrote and what he did. Marshall is able to bring all of these capacities to bear upon his complex subject.’

—James K. Chandler, Modern Language Review

‘A glowing account … by a kindly biographer’

—Gertrude Himmelfarb, New Republic

‘A pleasure to read and a delight to see … It is gracefully written with a clear command of philosophical and political controversies. It has a solid and comprehensive sense of Godwin’s literary contributions and, most important of all, it is tolerant of the many twists and turns of Godwin’s thought over time … It is, as we say of too few books, a good read and lovely book.’

—Isaac Kramnik, Albion

‘It brings back a thinker who was once visionary and confident, and who had the good fortune to write when utopian ideas did not seem utopian.’

—David Bromwich, New York Times Review of Books

‘The most substantial and comprehensive study … Peter Marshall’s book is a major contribution to the revaluation of a vigorous, original and honest thinker.’

—Thomas Balfour Elder

‘Godwin’s reputation … may now be restored with publication of this memorable biography.’

—Nelson Hayes, The Patriot Ledger

‘An absorbing biography … presenting a sympathetic portrait of a principled, embattled humanist. Peter Marshall describes these voluminous and multifaceted writings discerningly.’

—M.B. Freidman, Choice

‘An ambitious study that offers a thorough exploration of Godwin’s life and complex times’

—Linda Simon, Library Journal

‘A major contribution to the study of Godwin and his age’

—Katherine M. Morsberger, Magill’s Literary Annual

‘The present author is to be commended for having written a full-fledged biography of Godwin …. The volume, written in a sympathetic vein, is to a considerable extent based on hitherto untapped source materials. A detailed composite index is appended.’

—International Review of Social History

‘Peter Marshall’s book has very great qualities … As a philosopher, he looks at his subject with a clear mind and admirably handles his material, from the literary work to the philosophical and political doctrines … The impression given of the great anarchist’s steady, regular and coherent course is amply served by the assured direction of Marshall’s arguments. To read his book is a pleasure. He knows how to be a fine writer (his transitions and expressions are brilliantly constructed) and to be an agreeable storyteller (wielding anecdotes with tact) … The book is therefore a success.’

—Translated from the French of Serge Soupel, Etudes Anglaises

Book Title of William Godwin

I. Godwin, aged 38, by Thomas Kearsley, 1794. Engraved by P. Roberts.

Half Title of William Godwin

William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary

© Peter Marshall, 2017

This edition © 2017 by PM Press

ISBN: 978-1-62963-386-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959588

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For Dylan, Emily and Jenny

CONTENTS

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Foreword by John P. Clark

Introduction

Conclusion

Abbreviations

Notes

Select Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. John W. Burrow who followed the early stages of this book. Without his excellent advice and warm encouragement, it would never have been undertaken. The comments of Professor Gwyn A. Williams also proved invaluable. No serious student of William Godwin could fail to be indebted to the bibliographical labours of Professor Burton R. Pollin.

I should like to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the University of Sussex Library, the University of London Library, the British Library, the British Museum, Dr. Williams’s Library, the Bodleian Library, the Victoria and Albert Museum Library, the Norfolk Central Library, and the National Portrait Gallery.

I am indebted to Lord Abinger for permission to use and quote from the manuscripts in his possession. I have also been helped by Mrs. Mary Claire Bally-Clairmont, Professor Marion K. Stocking, Professor Don Locke, Mr. Kenneth Garlick and Lady Mander in locating the portraits of Godwin and his circle.

I would especially like to thank Jenny Zobel for her great help and understanding. The enthusiasm of my brother Michael has been much appreciated. I am indebted to Yvonne Carmichael for typing different drafts of the manuscript and to Caroline Williamson for seeing the work through the press. And to my friends who have been both inspired and irritated by my interest in William Godwin, thank you.

Gwynedd, Wales, July 1983

I would like to thank Ramsey Kanaan, Craig O’Hara, and Jonathan Rowland of PM Press for their respective roles in bringing out this corrected and updated edition. I am also indebted to Elizabeth Ashton Hill for help in reproducing some of the portraits which differ slightly from those in the first edition. John P. Clark’s very welcome Foreword is a major study in itself.

Rumleigh, Devon, England, November 2016

FOREWORD

Peter Marshall’s William Godwin is the most comprehensive and richly detailed work ever to appear on Godwin as a thinker, writer, and person. Marshall concludes this excellent study with the judgment that Godwin is a rare example of a man who excelled in both philosophy and literature, and stands forth as an authentic human being, a truly creative writer, and one of the great humanists of the Western tradition. (p. 408) In this beautifully-written and exhaustively researched book, Marshall presents abundant evidence on behalf of these conclusions and helps establish Godwin’s rightful position as a major figure in the history of Western political thought.

The strongest point in Marshall’s study is the many-sided approach that he takes in depicting his subject. On the one hand, he presents Godwin as a major social and moral philosopher who is significant for his contributions to libertarian political theory, utilitarian ethics, socialist economics, and progressive education. On the other, he shows Godwin to be important as a literary and cultural figure who embodies all the difficulties and contradictions of the transition from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the romanticism of the 19th century. Moreover, he consistently treats Godwin’s ideas within the context of the most pertinent historical developments. Indeed, the work is highly recommended not only as a definitive work on Godwin, but also for its lively and detailed depiction of the social, literary, and intellectual currents of the time.

Marshall’s scholarship is exemplary. He has an extensive knowledge of both primary and secondary works, and makes excellent use of Godwin’s notes and diaries. He demonstrates that Godwin is important for an extensive corpus of works, and not merely, as is often thought, for one great philosophical treatise (the Enquiry Concerning Political Justice) and one noteworthy novel (Caleb Williams). He defends quite convincingly the importance of such theoretical works as The Enquirer and Thoughts on Man, novels like St. Leon and Fleetwood, historical studies such as the Life of Chaucer and the History of the Commonwealth, the essay Of Population, and even some of Godwin’s children’s books. In short, he shows Godwin to be not only a major political thinker but also an extraordinary writer with unusually wide-ranging achievements.

Marshall delineates the many dimensions of Godwin’s life and thought in an extremely lucid and highly readable style. He tends to avoid critique in the broad sense, and refuses to confront directly the widely-debated theoretical issues raised by global perspectives such as structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, for example. For this reason, his analysis creates the appearance of being a common-sense approach, and philosophical presuppositions are left quietly in the background. Yet, they are certainly there. For example, he includes an enlightening discussion of the relation between ideas and material conditions which might easily have been usefully posed as an alternative to some varieties of Marxian interpretation. Similarly, he avoids the pitfalls of simplistic psychohistory, but at the same time exhibits sensitivity to the centrality of the psychological dimension in the shaping of Godwin’s outlook. His discussions consistently maintain a subtlety of explanation and a recognition of the complexity of influences. The result may not be entirely to the taste of some who crave deep theoretical analysis, but it is always highly satisfying as an example of careful, discriminating scholarship.

One of the most successful aspects of Marshall’s analysis is his treatment of the evolution of Godwin’s ideas over his quite lengthy writing career. Through a careful chronological approach, Marshall is able to interweave a variety of determining factors, both personal and social, in explaining the development of Godwin’s character and opinions. The result is a richly elaborated account of the influence of Godwin’s family and cultural background, his friends and acquaintances, his educational experiences, his extensive reading, and the social conditions and evolving historical tendencies of his time. Marshall is particularly illuminating on the development of Godwin’s thought before the writing of Political Justice, a subject that has been neglected previously.

His examination of the genesis of Godwin’s philosophical outlook leads him to the conclusion that it should be situated as much in the tradition of English Dissent as in the Enlightenment, which has been more heavily stressed in most of the literature. In defense of this view, he points to the profound influence of the Sandemandian sect of Calvinists in Godwin’s intellectual development. He cites such principles of this sect (in which Godwin was for a time a minister) as the centrality of the understanding in the attainment of truth, the superiority of morality to human law, the subordination of individual property to the claims of common need, the equality of all members of the community, the desirability of decision-making by consensus, and reliance on the force of opinion to promote virtue. Marshall then shows that each of these tenets is transformed into a fundamental principle of Godwin’s developed philosophical anarchism and utilitarian ethics.

In analyzing the evolution of Godwin’s ideas, Marshall presents a judicious assessment of areas of continuity and change. His discussion of the revisions of Political Justice is thorough and convincing. He traces with great care Godwin’s modifications of important concepts, while at the same time skillfully defending the view that there is a basic consistency in his outlook across the three editions. He demonstrates that Godwin’s emendations represent the logical development of the thinker’s fundamental ideas, and his elimination of principles and language that are at variance with his utilitarianism, anarchism, and determinism. Marshall shows that by the third edition Godwin moves closer to immaterialism, espouses a more Humean view of necessity, emphasizes the feelings more, admits some innate differences between individuals, makes his hedonistic ethics more consistent, weakens his opposition to marriage, and is more willing to accept some aspects of government as a necessary, if temporary, evil. Yet, Marshall demonstrates convincingly that underlying such changes is an essential continuity in his philosophical project that extends from the first edition of Political Justice in 1793 to the very late work Thoughts on Man in 1831. This effectively demolishes Don Locke’s contention in A Fantasy of Reason that one finds in Godwin’s later career a repudiation of the principles of a lifetime.

Marshall also presents a careful analysis of the evolution of Godwin’s literary productions. He takes these writings seriously as works of art, and also uses them to shed light on the development of the author’s social, political, moral, and metaphysical concepts. His detailed analysis of Godwin’s fiction illustrates the evolution of his sensibilities very clearly, particularly in regard to the growth of his romantic tendencies. One discovers that Godwin increasingly emphasizes the emotions and feelings, nature becomes a more significant reality to him, themes like isolation and alienation become more predominant, and more highly imaginative plots and characterizations appear.

Marshall correlates these changes very ably with the development of Godwin’s philosophy, and carefully connects both his literary and philosophical productions to the events of his personal life. An example is his illuminating treatment of the influence on Godwin of his first wife, the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Marshall shows that the brief period of Godwin’s life that he shared with Wollstonecraft had a profound effect, radicalizing some of his social views, and increasing his assessment of the importance of the feelings. He shows equally well how much of Godwin’s later life, which was filled with great disappointment, agonizing personal relationships, and financial hardship, led to a reversal of some of his attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions. Marshall admirably details key aspects of this somber side of Godwin’s life, which was reflected in his relationship to his daughter Mary, her husband Percy Shelley, and others in the Shelley Circle. He portrays particularly well the tragic relationship of Godwin to Shelley, which combined intellectual affinity, mutual respect, and painful personal alienation.

Marshall’s discussion of Godwin’s social thought presents a powerful case for his inclusion in the Pantheon of major Western social and political philosophers. The comparison of Godwin to figures like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill might seem to many an exaggeration of the former’s stature. But the text contains extensive evidence for the thesis that Godwin is indeed a major figure in Western political and social thought. Marshall refutes Don Locke’s seriously defective judgment that Godwin is unquestionably dead as a political theorist by citing many of his provocative and well-reasoned arguments that are still relevant to political debates today. While Godwin is neither, as Marshall suggests, the first great exponent of society without government, (p. 84) nor the Marx of anarchism, (p. 3) he is certainly a towering figure in libertarian thought, and presents arguments that have never been convincingly dealt with by advocates of the state and other authoritarian social institutions. This is true of his brilliant analysis of the evils of private property, his devastating critique of punishment, his withering attack on the noxious influence of government and the state, and his powerful and groundbreaking defense of freedom of thought and expression. Marshall also shows convincingly that Godwin is a more significant figure in the tradition of progressive education than is even the oft-cited Rousseau, and that he certainly deserves a more honored place in the history of anarchist and libertarian pedagogy than he is usually accorded. Marshall demonstrates that Godwin is much more consistent than other well-known figures in advocating such libertarian principles as the need for respect, honesty and toleration in dealing with children. (p. 166)

Another of the great merits of Marshall’s book is the powerful case it makes for the importance of Godwin as a moral philosopher. Godwin has never received the recognition due to him as a founder and major exponent of utilitarian ethics, despite his elaboration of an impressive utilitarian theory at about the same time as Bentham. As Marshall notes, Godwin provides better arguments than Bentham and anticipates the best of John Stuart Mill. (p. 3) He argues convincingly for Godwin as a thoroughgoing utilitarian (p. 103) who created one of the most highly developed and clearly articulated theories in the history of utilitarianism. The coherence and consistency of Godwin’s utilitarian ethical system is often overlooked by commentators who pay more attention to his rather striking and radically unconventional conclusions concerning social institutions and moral practices than to the underlying theoretical foundations. Marshall shows Godwin’s position to be a consistent expression of act-utilitarianism, and demonstrates that at this very early stage in the history of modern ethical theory Godwin had already confronted fundamental issues (such as the status of moral rules) that are still the topic of lively debate.

To give Godwin credit for his thorough-going utilitarianism is, however, to defend him with a two-edged sword. Marshall compares Godwin’s ideal of a society seeking to maximize general utility to the Greek notion of individual self-fulfillment. (p. 401) There are indeed, commonalities; yet, the comparison is not necessarily to the credit of Godwin, particularly to the degree that he adheres to strict utilitarianism. The Greek ideal of self-realization, as expressed, for example, in Aristotle’s conception of the Good Life, or eudaimonia, is a much richer image of human development and of humans as social beings than that offered by Godwin. He certainly took hedonistic utilitarianism to impressive heights, yet he is bound by the limits of that perspective, which is ultimately committed to a narrowly rationalistic psychology and to an excessively individualistic view of human nature.

Despite his Humean view that reason must ultimately be the slave of the passions, Godwin never adequately overcomes this excessively rationalistic model of the human psyche. He describes reason as omnipotent, and holds that sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated must always be victorious over error. (p. 157) Godwin began to realize that he was living in an age of ideology, and he also began to give more credit to the influence of the both the passions and the imagination, but he never really overcame his early rationalism. He was capable of asserting that it is because man is a rational being that he is raised above the other inhabitants of the globe of earth, and that the individuals of our race are made the partners of ‘gods, and men like gods.’ (Political Justice, Bk.VII, ch. iii) This view, which is now seems so extreme in its rationalistic anthropocentrism, is combined with a certain disdain for the material world and for nature. Godwin was for a time inclined toward a kind of Platonism and over his life drifted increasingly in the direction of a form of immaterialism. To the extent that he recognizes even the existence of the material world, he goes so far as to praise Benjamin Franklin for his speculation that mind would one day become omnipotent over matter. (p. 88) And despite certain romantic tendencies in regard to nature, he is capable of judging that the spontaneous productions of the earth are few, and contribute little to wealth, expenditure or splendour. (Political Justice, Bk.VIII, ch. ii) Thus, he is far from giving the intrinsic value and creative powers of nature their due.

Moreover, I would argue that Godwin’s individualism, particularly in his earlier works, is much more problematic than Marshall is willing to admit. He concedes that in Godwin’s view society is essentially atomistic, nothing more than an aggregation of individuals, but he argues that this view is mitigated by Godwin’s belief that man is a social being. (p. 400) However, despite some evolution of Godwin’s ideas, his thought remains one-sided, with an abstract, inadequately social concept of the individual predominating. He has no real grasp of the complex mutual interaction between the person, the human community, and the community of nature, and he never develops an adequate concept of communal solidarity. True, he writes of our obligations to others and of the morally inescapable demands of political justice; yet, he remains on the level of individual acts of benevolence dictated by calculations of social utility. While the context is shifted to secular rationalism, we still confront a form of the Protestant vision of the individual believer standing before a just God. It is also difficult to ignore the disquieting similarity between the calculating rationality of the altruistic Godwinian socialist and that of the most egoistic Benthamite capitalist. Certainly, Godwin recognizes the social utility of feelings of love and altruism, but such recognition is similar to, and goes no further than, Mill’s later individualistic utilitarian position.

There are some areas in which Marshall does not hesitate to subject Godwin’s ideas to searching criticism. For example, he pointedly questions their adequacy on the issue of the nature of social change. He notes that while Godwin contends that change is the product of the interaction between developing ideas and evolving material reality, he places too much importance on the transformation of opinion, and never comes to terms with the need for the simultaneous reconstruction of social institutions and power relationships. Thus, while he was a theoretical revolutionary, his reformist politics were in direct contradiction to the requirements for breaking out of this circle of mutual determination. In this, he was very much in the tradition of the European Enlightenment, which placed an exaggerated emphasis on the power of reason and intellect, and had an idealist faith in the slow advance of truth over falsehood and superstition.

Thus, like many other figures who imbibed the spirit of the Enlightenment, Godwin was a firm believer in the myth of progress. In Marshall’s opinion, Godwin’s idea of progress combines a primitivist vision with a respect for the achievements of civilization. (p. 208) However, neo-primitivists and anti-civilizationists are not advised to turn to Godwin looking for theoretical support for their position, for his sensibilities and his idea of reason are, in fact, much closer to the opposite pole of this dichotomy. He always remains fully committed to the civilized, and stays entirely within its bounds, even when he presents ideas which challenge the dominant institutions of society (the state, patriarchy, and private property). Godwin is not willing to ruthlessly question all the foundations of civilization, to the degree that someone like William Blake (the subject of a brief but excellent study by Marshall) was in his own time, and Charles Fourier and Joseph Déjacque were a little later. He never comprehends the radical sense in which realities like the primitive, the feminine, nature, and desire place in question the entire history and rationality of civilization, and, consequently, his own vision of moral, intellectual and technological progress. His elaboration of themes like decentralized community, individual rights, distribution according to need, and political justice (for all their brilliance) lose some of their critical force because of his inadequate, liberal individualist conceptions of self, society, mind, and nature.

Although Marshall might have said more about some of these fundamental philosophical issues, what is of greater significance is his notable success in the task which he did in fact choose to undertake in this book. He is an excellent guide to Godwin as a complex thinker and personality, showing him to be a man of paradox, and, at times, indeed, of blatant, unreconciled contradiction. Not only was he a rationalist who struggled uneasily to come to terms with romanticism, but also a theorist who often strove vainly to put his ideals into practice in his own life. He was a writer of great power, creativity, and accomplishment who was capable of unfortunate lapses in aesthetic sensitivity. He was a thinker of enormous imagination and analytical ability, who could at times succumb to uncritical, one-sided abstraction. In view of Marshall’s exploration of the many sides of this intriguing figure, and his conclusive demonstration of Godwin’s considerable significance in the history of anarchism and in the larger history of ideas, this work is destined to be an enduring classic.

INTRODUCTION

William Godwin died in April 1836, virtually unknown except to a small coterie of intellectuals. His writings formed the creed of no organized body of followers, and his grave in St. Pancras Churchyard remained unvisited. Yet, according to Hazlitt, forty years before,

He was in the very zenith of a sultry and unwholesome popularity; he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice was the theme, his name was not far off… No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Tom Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him, Paley an old woman, Edmund Burke a flashy sophist.¹

When Godwin’s principal treatise appeared in 1793 it was avidly read by young intellectuals like Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth, by radical leaders like Francis Place and John Thelwall, and by many artisans who clubbed together to pay its high price. His novel Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, published in the following year, was considered no less of a masterpiece.

It was Godwin’s misfortune to have his name closely linked to the French Revolution. As the reaction against Jacobinism in Britain grew, so his reputation waned. He was at first vilified and then rapidly forgotten. By 1812 his eclipse was so great that it was with ‘inconceivable emotions’ that his future son-in-law Shelley found the author of Political Justice to be still alive.² He continued to write prolifically and to recruit the occasional disciple, but apart from the temporary notoriety of his Of Population in 1820, he was unable to recapture the public imagination. The prejudice against the heroic veteran of the 1790s was too great. De Quincey spoke on behalf of the ruling class when he declared ‘most people felt of Mr Godwin with the same alienation and horror as of a ghoul, or a bloodless vampyre, or the monster created by Frankenstein’.³

This was, of course, an exaggeration. His doctrines quietly influenced the early socialists Robert Owen, William Thompson and Thomas Hodgskin, and through them his vision of a free and classless society reached Marx. The growing labour movement also took note of what he had to say. In the 1830s and 1840s the Owenites and Chartists printed in their journals many extracts from Godwin’s works and published a new edition of Political Justice in 1842.

It was not however until Kegan Paul brought out the excellent biography William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (1876) that he began to receive serious scholarly attention. It was soon recognized that ‘the seeds of all the ideas of recent Socialism and Anarchism’ were to be found in his work.⁴ Even the eminent Victorian Leslie Stephen expressed a keen interest in the ‘gorgeous bubbles’ of the ‘venerable horseleech’.⁵

Yet the Tory image of Godwin still held sway, particularly amongst literary historians. He continued to be remembered more for his disastrous family connections as the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the father of Mary Shelley, and the step-father of Byron’s mistress Claire Clairmont; more for his baneful influence on Southey and Wordsworth; more for his strange friendship with Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt; and more for his sponging off Shelley than for any contribution to philosophy or literature. When not dismissed as a utopian crank, he was described as an icy rationalist who held outrageous opinions on government, property and marriage. His chief opponent, Malthus, it was felt, had answered him once and for all.

Legends are notoriously difficult to change. In our own century, however, changed circumstances and careful research have led to a considerable measure of reappraisal. Godwin is now recognized as the first and most capable exponent of anarchism, a prominent figure in the history of ethics, and a pioneer in socialist economics and progressive education. His novels have been praised for their powerful psychological insight and acute social observation.

Apart from his stature as a philosopher and novelist, Godwin is important as a representative figure. He was brought up as a Calvinist but like many Dissenters lost his faith and became a radical. He drew the extreme conclusions of eighteenth-century rationalism only to help create the new cult of sensibility associated with Romanticism. He was at the centre of the radical intellectual and literary circles in London during the French Revolution. From his birth in 1756 to his death in 1836 he straddled two centuries, and his thought and action reflect some of the most momentous changes in British history. And he looked both backwards and forwards: one of the last great Commonwealth Men, he became the most eloquent prophet of modern anarchism.

At the same time, Godwin is not merely of historical interest. His arguments have never been so relevant. As a moral philosopher, he imaginatively challenges the crumbling orthodoxy in contemporary ethics by arguing that facts about human nature are relevant to values and that moral principles can be supported by sound reasoning and truth. In so far as utilitarianism is a living tradition, Godwin provides better arguments than Bentham and anticipates the best of John Stuart Mill.

In political philosophy, he questions many fundamental assumptions in his treatment of government, democracy and law. He will be of interest to all those who believe that politics are inseparable from ethics and that independence, individuality, rationality and happiness are central concerns of political enquiry. Above all, he speaks directly to the new radicalism which has emerged which seeks a libertarian way between the bureaucratic centralism of communist states and the organized lovelessness of the capitalist world. What Locke is for liberalism and Marx is for communism, Godwin is for anarchism although he might not be as influential historically.

A great deal of the extensive commentary on Godwin is uneven. Amongst recent studies, Burton R. Pollin has brought out well the role of Education and Enlightenment in the Works of William Godwin (1963). John P. Clark has given an excellent exposition of The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin (1977), although it is based only on a few books. Don Locke’s A Fantasy of Reason: The Life and Thought of William Godwin (1980) is a lively and substantial work but it defies chronology and neglects the historical context. He presents Godwin as a philosopher’s philosopher but underestimates him as a novelist’s novelist. While he recognizes his importance as a moral thinker, he unjustly claims that Godwin is ‘unquestionably dead’ as a political theorist.⁶ And as the title of his work suggests, he tries to demonstrate the unreasonableness of Godwin’s reason and narrates the ‘massive misjudgments’ of his life and writings.⁷ For his part, Jean de Palacio in his William Godwin et son monde intérieur (1980) rigidly separates Godwin’s political concerns from his inner world. Inspired by Freud, he relentlessly tracks him down in his fiction in order to present him dubiously in a ‘retraite autistique a l’intérieur de soi’.⁸ B. J. Tysdahl has written a mainly formal and stylistic account of William Godwin as Novelist (1981). Finally, William St. Clair’s Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (1989) is a good family biography but poor on their works.

My own work is a study of both Godwin’s life and writings. It is particularly important to consider the relationship between the two since he elaborated his ideas directly from his own experience: ‘the philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed’, he wrote, ‘is mainly derived from the act of introspection … the analysis of the individual may stand in general consideration for the analysis of the species’.⁹ Similarly, his novels are largely autobiographical, indeed confessional; he believed that every author ‘puts much of his own character into his work; and a skilful anatomist of the soul before he reaches the perusal of the last page, will have formed a very tolerable notion of the dispositions of the writer’.¹⁰ It is equally advisable to take a chronological approach to a study of his work, not only because it helps to explain the apparent inconsistencies and contradictions, but because he himself admitted that every four or five years he would look back ‘astonished at the stupidity & folly of which I had a short time before been the dupe’.¹¹

While tracing his fundamental assumptions and specific borrowings, I have tried as far as possible to place Godwin in his personal, social and historical context. His ideas and feelings were after all only part of his activity as a whole living being, and he belonged to a specific social group in a particular time and place. In order to give a clear account of the origins, nature and evolution of his thought, I have shown the gradual emergence and subsequent revision of his major themes. I also give a critical estimate of his work, recognizing the equal importance of his philosophy and literature and their mutual illumination.

My study of Godwin’s life and work, based on the largely untapped Abinger Manuscripts and extensive new published and unpublished materials, offers the following arguments. First, the most important context of his philosophy was the Dissenting tradition. While he borrowed much from the liberal thinkers of the English and French Enlightenment, his early exposure to Calvinism and his contact with the Dissenters played a crucial role in his development. Secondly, many of his fundamental beliefs were developed well before the publication of Political Justice in 1793, and despite his subsequent revisions, the spirit and outline of his system remained intact. Thirdly, Godwin’s influence, both on his contemporaries and in the nineteenth century, was much greater than is usually assumed. And finally, Godwin is not merely a man of two books: there is a great deal of his enormous output which continues to be of burning interest and real value today.

It will become apparent that the traditional image of Godwin as a naive and abstract philosopher, living in a frozen ivory tower, is fundamentally wrong. His roots were in rural Norfolk and he came to live in the metropolis only in his late twenties. He had a close knowledge of practical affairs and participated in some of the major controversies of the day. He was no visionary but made a clear distinction between theory and action, between what we may accept in the ‘sobriety of the closet’ and what we may assume in ‘actual life’.¹² Far from being the ‘bloodless vampyre’ of popular mythology, he recognized the importance of the imagination and valued the heart as well as the head.

A study of Godwin is no easy task. He was active, if not always competent, in many fields. At different times in his life, he was ajournalist, literary critic, satirist, political philosopher, psychologist, economist, educationalist, biographer, historian, novelist, playwright, essayist, grammarian, lexicographer, fabulist, and writer of sermons and children’s books. Yet behind this varied and vuluminous output, Godwin had an overriding sense of purpose. In all his writings, he insisted, ‘the study to which I had devoted myself was man, to analyse his nature as a moralist, and to delineate his passions as an historian, or a recorder of fictitious adventures’.¹³

Godwin has been chiefly remembered as a philosopher and novelist. But he was also a revolutionary, albeit a peaceful one, in that he called for a thorough transformation of human relations. In his last major work, Thoughts on Man, he summarized inadvertently his own achievement: ‘If I devote my energies to enlighten my fellow-creatures, to detect the weak places in our social institutions, to plead the cause of liberty, and to invite others to engage in noble actions and unite in effecting the most solid and unquestionable improvements, I erect to my name an eternal monument’.¹⁴ Like Rousseau, Godwin sought to produce the whole person who would make the ideal society. This profound humanism inspired all that he thought and did.

CHAPTER I

Childhood

William Godwin was born in 1756, four years before the accession of George III and at the outset of a period of profound changes. Since the settlement of 1688 the landed gentry had been in power, and under Walpole the House of Commons had become the dominant political body. There was little to distinguish between the major parties, and the names ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ related as much to tradition and descent as to political ideology. But as John Wilkes and his followers made clear in the following decade, parliament was corrupt, unrepresentative and dependent on the Crown. Abroad, Britain was expanding her Empire in India and America, and in the year Godwin was born Chatham declared war – the Seven Years War – on her chief rival France.

Britain was still primarily a society of peasants earning a subsistence from strip farming and of artisans working independently or in small workshops. Enclosures by Act of Parliament, however, were gathering momentum, turning the English countryside into the now familiar pattern of hedges, fields and scattered farms. The factory system had yet to appear but the first British canal had just been opened in Lancashire. At Godwin’s birth, Britain was thus about to experience the Industrial Revolution which not only produced violent changes in agriculture and industry, but fundamentally transformed the whole structure of society.

It was at the back of the castle in Wisbech, in a new brick house in Knowe’s Acre, that William Godwin was born on 3 March 1756. In the middle of the century, Wisbech, the capital of North Cambridgeshire, was an assize and race-town. It was a flourishing market for the sheep, cattle, and corn from the fertile Fens, while the tidal river Nene had turned it into a bustling port. It was an attractive town, with the broad sweep of its river and its imposing architecture.

The district had a long tradition of political dissent. The local peasantry and craftsmen no doubt retained something of the spirit of staunch independence which had inspired the revolt in 1549 of twenty thousand men led by Robert Kett against enclosures of common land. In the following century, East Anglians formed the nucleus of Cromwell’s New Model Army, organized the Independent movement, and listened enthusiastically to the teachings of the Levellers.

II. Wisbech, engraved in 1756 by Dr. Massey.

The religion of Godwin’s family, however, was probably more important to his subsequent development. His family had been Dissenters for several generations. Although officially tolerated since 1689, the Dissenters were unable to participate freely in English life. Unless he was ready to conform to the articles of the Anglican Church, William Godwin would be unable to register his birth, marry officially, or be buried in consecrated ground. The national universities and all public offices would be closed to him. Not surprisingly, the Dissenters came to form a separate group and constituted a ‘great, permanent undercurrent of dissatisfied criticism of the State of England’.¹

As with most Dissenters, both sides of Godwin’s family came from the prosperous middle class. His paternal great-grandfather Edward had been an attorney in Newbury, where he was elected Mayor in 1706, and became the Town Clerk until his death in 1719. The wig of this illustrious ancestor remained as a relic in the family, and as a boy Godwin wore it several times, dressing himself up as Cato: the role of heroic republican was one which he readily assumed in later life.

Godwin was even more proud of his grandfather Edward, whom he consciously took as a model. Born in 1695, he was sent to the Dissenting academy directed by Samuel Jones at Tewkesbury and trained for the ministry. Among his fellow pupils were Isaac Watts, the hymn writer, Thomas Seeker, later Archbishop of Canterbury, and Joseph Butler, the moral philosopher. In this excellent company, Edward Godwin was not, as his grandson put it, ‘wholly unworthy’.² After a short period as joint tutor of an academy in Hungerford he became the minister at Little St. Helens, Bishopsgate Street, London, and turned the fashionable congregation into one of the most popular in the capital.

Godwin’s grandfather was a man of great learning and pious disposition. He was a close friend of some of the leading Dissenting intellectuals: he supervised the printing of the Dr. Philip Doddridge’s The Family Expositor, an abridged version of the New Testament, and Robert Blair asked him to criticize the manuscript of his poem The Grave. He published at least six volumes of sermons, a small volume of hymns, and a collection of Christian tales. At his funeral in 1764 Dr. William Langford declared that ‘few have been more generally esteemed and loved by good Men of all Denominations than he was’.³

Both his two sons became ministers. The elder, Edward, having run a ‘career of wildness & dissipation’, was eventually converted by the Methodist George Whitefield.⁴ He became a distinguished preacher and published many devout allegories, accounts of religious experiences, and hymns, but died young in 1764.

The other son, John, Godwin’s father, was born on 21 February 1723. He attended the Dissenters’ academy at Northampton, which was noted for its excellent scholarship and freedom of enquiry. He was lucky in having his father’s friend Philip Doddridge as a tutor, and he not only adopted his moderate Calvinism but retained for him throughout his life a ‘more affectionate veneration than for any other human being’.⁵ Doddridge had a long-standing connection with the congregation in Wisbech, and he no doubt arranged his pupil’s appointment as a minister there in 1746.

The Dissenters were a powerful group in Wisbech — the most active Christian body, without whom the town would have been ‘utterly heathen’.⁶ They were however in decline, and it may well have been a reduced congregation as much as an increase in his family that persuaded John Godwin to leave Wisbech two years after the birth of his seventh child, William.

The family moved in 1758 to the small market town of Debenham in Suffolk. The new congregation was not however an easy one: it had seen seventeen ministers in sixteen years.⁷ A schism concerning Arianism soon broke out and forced the Trinitarian John Godwin to apply again in the midsummer of 1760 to the Independent Church of Christ in Guestwick, a remote village sixteen miles north of Norwich. It was a tiny place: there was no main street and its few inhabitants were scattered thinly for about a mile around. Here Godwin’s father was to remain for the last twelve years of his life.

III. Guestwick Old Meeting House, sketched in 1850 by Joseph Davey.

The chapel in Guestwick reflected the simple faith of its adherents. Built between 1672 and 1695, it was a plain rectangular structure of about twelve yards by sixteen, with a balcony on three sides and sash windows. It had strong republican roots and was founded by the Puritan Richard Worts in 1652, whose signature appears amongst the political papers of John Milton.⁸ Godwin’s father would also have sat in the pulpit in a finely carved oak chair known as Cromwell’s chair. It may well have been presented by the Lord Protector himself, or by his son-in-law General Fleetwood, who lived at Irmingland Hall six miles away.

The area was among the most prosperous in the country. Norfolk was the chief producer of grain and Norwich the centre of the worsted industry. The prosperity, however, was not shared by the labourers and artisans of John Godwin’s congregation. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the enclosure movement had an adverse effect on the peasantry. Unemployment increased. Despite higher productivity, the wages of the labourers rose about a quarter while the average price of purchases increased by at least 60 per cent.⁹

John Godwin’s small congregation would travel up to eight miles from some thirty-seven villages around Guestwick. It did not prove a great success. During the twelve years of his rule, the congregation of seventeen members and forty or so subscribers more than halved.¹⁰ Yet he seems to have been quite content to remain in this rural backwater, earning £60 a year, little more than the wages of a skilled artisan.

He was certainly not a man of learning. His son recalled that he spent little time studying:

His sermon, for in my memory he only preached once on a Sunday, was regularly begun to be written in a very swift short-hand after tea on Saturday evening. I believe he was always free from any desire of intellectual distinction on a large scale; I know that it was with reluctance that he preached at any time at Norwich, in London, or any other place where he suspected that his accents might fall on the ear of criticism.

All the same, he discharged his duties conscientiously and spent much of his time visiting his congregation on horseback. He was, as his son remarked, regarded by his neighbours ‘as a wise as well as a good man, and he desired no more’.

Godwin’s attitude to his father seems to have been somewhat ambivalent. Although his father was extremely affectionate to the rest of his family, Godwin felt that he was singled out for ill-treatment: ‘to me, who was perhaps never his favourite, his rebukes had a painful tone of ill humour and asperity’.¹¹ Godwin moreover recalled his death in 1772 with apparent indifference, merely commenting that he showed considerable reluctance to quit this world.

On the basis of this scanty evidence, it has been argued that Godwin reacted to his father’s real or imagined antagonism by the contrary impulses of wanting first to become a minister, and then by rejecting his religion.¹² The recurrent theme of rebellion against a father figure in his novels is also put down to a badly resolved Oedipus complex.¹³ Such an interpretation rests however on ambiguous evidence and runs counter to Godwin’s own assertions. He described his father as ‘a man of a warm heart and unblemished manners, ardent in his friendships, eager for the relief of distress whether of mind or circumstances, and decent and zealous in the discharge of his professional duties’.¹⁴ He may have resented his father’s rebukes, but his subsequent atheism and anarchism cannot be explained simply in terms of an unconscious parricide wish.

Nevertheless, his father was responsible for the atmosphere of austere piety which prevailed at home. A man of great temperance, ‘extremely nice in his apparel, and delicate in his food’, he was a strict Calvinist and steadfast Dissenter. He was scrupulous about religious observances. Godwin recalled that one Sunday, as he was walking in the garden, he took the family’s cat in his arms: ‘My father saw me, and seriously reproved my levity, remarking that on the Lord’s day he was ashamed to observe me demeaning myself with such profaneness’.¹⁵ When his son later expressed a desire to become a minister, he declared that he had ‘a sort of pride & unsubmittingness’ in him which was incompatible with the humility of the gospel. He always reproached him for his ‘aristocracy’ and for his ‘want of religion’¹⁶

While he was a minister in Wisbech, John Godwin had married Ann Hull. Her family had originally owned landed property in Durham, but her father had settled in Wisbech after retiring from the Merchant Navy. He owned several vessels in King’s Lynn, which plied their trade as far as the Baltic. In his short memoirs, Godwin makes only a passing reference to her family.

Godwin’s mother received a scanty education, but she was a warm and affectionate person, moderating her husband’s austerity. ‘Some of the villagers’, Godwin recalled, ‘were impertinent enough to allege that she was too gay in her style of decorating her person. She was facetious, and had an ambition to be thought the teller of a good story, and an adept at hitting off a smart repartee. She was most obliging, submissive, and dutiful wife’.¹⁷ After her husband’s death, however, she became deeply religious, converted to Methodism, and grew extremely parsimonious. Her one worry was the infidelity of her offspring: ‘How cuting a stroke it is’, she lamented, ‘to be the means of bringing Children into the world to be the subjects of the kingdom of Darkness to dwell with Divils and Damned Spirits …’¹⁸ She would pray for Godwin three times a day, as well as during the sleepless hours of the night.

Godwin later rejected on utilitarian grounds the ties of consanguinity, and argued that it was the duty of the enlightened man to save in a fire a great benefactor like Archbishop Fenelon before his chambermaid, even if she were his mother or wife. He shocked his contemporaries by asking: ‘What magic is there in the pronoun my’ to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth? My wife or my mother may be a fool or a prostitute, malicious, lying or dishonest. If they be, of what consequence is it that they are mine?’¹⁹ It was not, however, through maternal neglect that he later condemned the domestic affections. He always remembered his mother with great affection and warmth. He regretted that on doctor’s advice he was sent from home for two years to be ‘nourished by a hireling’, but this was more from a hurt sense of dignity than a feeling of being spurned.²⁰ He believed that she always protected him in a mysterious way, and it was only when she died in 1809 that he felt truly alone for the first time.

Godwin was an exceptional child. Neither his eleven brothers nor his only sister seem to have excelled in any way. They became tradesmen, and for the most part, were poor, sick and unsuccessful. Through them he was able to experience vicariously the world of the farm, the small business, and the prison, as well as the lives of the sailor, the labourer, the journey man, the clerk, the seamstress and the servant. Although Godwin was later to move amongst the leading intellectuals in the metropolis, there was a real personal basis to his social criticism and imaginative writing.

He was seventh of thirteen children and the third to survive infancy. Only eight were alive when their father died in 1772. Nothing is known of Edward, except that he died in Shoreditch in April 1776. Equally shadowy remains Conyers Jocelyn, who was born on 24 November 1769, assumed the name of John Hull, and died on board the ‘Fox’ on an unknown date.

The date of birth of Godwin’s younger brother John is also unknown. He apparently hid successfully in 1788 from the press gang in Norfolk, and afterwards went to London to work in a low capacity in a firm. Although he boasted ‘Seneca’s morals’, as his mother put it, he died almost starving in December 1805.²¹ Nathaniel, born 19 February 1768, was the youngest. After a seven-year stint at sea, he too decided in 1799 to go into business but was forced to take a journeyman’s place in 1805. He eventually returned to the navy, and probably died at sea. A closer brother was Joseph, whose dates of birth and death are also unknown. He chiefly distinguished himself by going to prison and by ill-using his wife Mary.

The only sister was Hannah, born on 7 April 1762. She became a dressmaker by trade but turned her hand to poetry and after Godwin was the best educated member of the family. Like her brothers, she was a constant worry to her mother. ‘Poor dear Hannah’, she lamented in 1788, ‘once made it [religion] her Chief concern and happiness but I now fear it is otherwise’.²² Hannah later saw Godwin regularly in London and discussed knowledgeably the principles of political justice. Her faith revived however before she died unmarried on 27 December 1817.

Godwin’s closest brother was Philip Hull, born 13 March 1765, who called himself Hull. He remained a farmer in Norfolk, first on his father’s estate in Wood Dalling, which he purchased in 1799, and then at East Bradenham. He became the most prosperous member of the family. He married on 6 March 1793 and had a large family of seven children – some of whose descendants were still alive in the neighbourhood in 1862.²³ The two brothers maintained an irregular but friendly correspondence, mainly about family affairs. Hull would sometimes send the odd ham or turkey from his farm and Godwin would forward little presents of books for the children.

An additional member of Godwin’s large family was his father’s first cousin Hannah, an ex-schoolmistress who came to live in the same household. Godwin’s mother later told her son that she was ‘a person you ought to Rever as your second Mother, who nurtured you in your infancy’.²⁴ Her whole time was spent in solitary devotion, reading religious books, and cultivating a garden.

Cousin Hannah was entrusted with the initial education of Godwin and probably exerted the greatest influence on him. There was little time for fun or games. Although Godwin had the honour to share her bed, she instructed him to make himself ready for sleep ‘with a temper as if I were never to wake again in this sublunary world’.²⁵ The lesson made a deep impression on him. It was confirmed by reading five or six times at the age of five Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, with its gloomy Calvinist stress on human depravity and predestination.

The second book Godwin read was James Janeway’s A Token for Children (1676), an ‘Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives, and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children’. If anything, its impact was even greater. The ‘premature eminence’ of the children, Godwin recalled, ‘strongly excited my emulation. I felt as if I were willing to die with them, if I could with equal success engage the admiration of my friends and mankind.’²⁶ It helped trigger off a love of fame which became the ruling passion of Godwin’s life.

His school life only confirmed the religious and moral influences which surrounded him at home. When he was four, he and a younger brother became the pupils of an old woman called Mrs Gedge who had seen twenty years of the previous century and was deeply religious. Godwin remembered her bitterly lamenting the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in September 1752, which dropped eleven days in the year, altered Christmas day, and led to riots throughout the country. Under her tuition, he read through the Old and New Testaments and acquired a close knowledge of their contents.

He was a precocious child. At the age of six he was able to write, enjoyed reading poetry, and wanted to be a poet. Bred after the strictest form of the Christian religion, he was regarded by many ‘as a saint, and set apart for the public service of God from my mother’s womb’.²⁷ Religion became the most essential part of his existence, and rendered him ‘one of the gravest and most serious boys that ever