William Godwin, Wisbech, 1756 - London, 1836, was a journalist, political philosoper, novelist and author of children's books. Born in a family of dissenters, Godwin was not allowed to study at Cambridge or Oxford. He was educated at Hoxton Academy and became a minister. Initially a follower of Sandemanianism ("bare faith" calvinism), he moved to deism after reading works of Helvetius, Holbach and Rousseau. This led to a break with his congregation. Godwin moved to London where he took up his pen for a living. He gained fame and notoriety with "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" (1793) which he published in response to Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790). A year later, "Things As They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams" appeared, a literary exposition of his political philosophy. With these works, Godwin established himself as one of the leading Jacobins in England. Godwin's philosophy can be seen as an inversion of his earlier calvinistic worldview. He rejected the notions of original sin and predestination, benevolence is not divine but natural, merit is real, ambition and longing for fame are not necessarily vices, but can be virtuous. Godwin returns to these subjects in "Thoughts on Man" (1831), which is his "most sustained piece of philosophy since his Enquirer (1798)" (Philp). Godwin is considered a founding father of utilitarianism. According to Peter Kropotkin, Godwin "was the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed in his remarkable work" (Kropotkin). Godwin was married to Mary Wollstonecraft, author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792). Wollstonecraft died shortly after the birth of their daughter Mary, who would marry the poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and who became a famous author in her own right with her novel Frankenstein (1818). The last decades has shown a resurgence of interest in Godwin. In the 1990s scholarly editions appeared of the "Collected Novels and Memoirs of William Godwin" and "Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin". In the 2010s Godwin's diaries were digitalized by Bodleian and scholarly editions of "The Plays of William Godwin" and "The Letters of William Godwin" followed a year later.