Writer William Godwin was born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire on March 3, 1756. He attended Hoxton Presbyterian College and became a minister. He left the ministry in 1787 in order to become a full-time writer. His best-known works are Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794). In 1797, he married feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft and they had a child who later became known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley the author of Frankenstein. He primarily wrote novels during his later years, including Mandeville (1817), Cloudesley (1830) and Deloraine (1833). He died on April 7, 1836.
Merle Goldman is Professor of History, Emerita, at Boston University and Associate of the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University.?Mark Philp is former Head of the Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University and is a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College, Oxford.