GODWIN, William.

HISTORY OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND.; From its commencement, to the Restoration of Charles the Second. [in four volumes]

London: Colburn, 1824/26/27-28. First Edition. Bound in 3/4 calf and marble boards, morocco labels, little rubbed but a very good clean set. NCBEL II, 1250; St. Clair page 522. Item #46936

Godwin (1756-1836) was an anarchist philosopher, influential Jacobean, husband of author Mary Wollstonecraft and father of author Mary Shelley. He believed in humankind's rationality, that reason taught benevolence and that rational creatures should be able to live together without formal laws. His novels reinforced his political views first expressed in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). He had a great influence on the romantic poets, especially Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron.
Godwin had been contemplating this production of this work since he had sat in Cromwell's chair in the meeting house at Guestwick. For six years after Shelley's death, Godwin was ... writing a four-volume History of the Commonwealth of England ... The main reason why England's great experiment had failed, Godwin suggested, was that `the intellect and moral feeling' of the country were not yet ripe[St. Clair p. 474].

Price: $950.00 save 20% $760.00