An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in 2 vols.

Godwin’s best known work of political theory. Written in the early years of the French Revolution before the Terror had begun, Godwin provides a devastating critique of unjust government institutions and optimistically proposes that individuals not the state can best provide for their needs. He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. This work has inspired many generations of radical thinkers.

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Citation

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1793). In 2 vols.

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Mary Wollstonecraft (Author)

Godwin was Wollstonecraft’s interlocutor, collaborator, lover, and, eventually, husband. They married in 1797 when she was pregnant with their daughter, Mary Wollstoncraft Godwin (later, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), but Wollstonecraft died shortly afterwards from birth complications. After Wollestonecraft’s death, Godwin became Wollstonecraft’s first biographer.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Author)

Godwin’s first child. She was deeply educated about and influenced by her father (and mother’s) radical political philosophies. She was the lover, and later the wife, of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of Godwin’s political followers.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (Author)

An English Romantic poet and a political radical. He sought Godwin out as an intellectual mentor and soon grew attached to Godwin’s daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who he ran away with (although he was already married). They did marry later and had several children, only one of whom survived to adulthood.

Thomas Holcroft (Author)

Godwin’s best friend. They read and commented on each other’s writings. Godwin defends him (as well as John Thelwall and John Horne Tooke) from charges of treason in 1794 in Cursory Strictures on the Charge Delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre to the Grand Jury, 2 October 1794.