Sold by Bauman Rare Books, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.
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AbeBooks Seller since 29 July 2014
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"GODWIN, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, And its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. WITH: The Enquirer. Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1796, 1797. Three volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter brown calf and marbled boards. $10,500.First octavo edition of Godwin's revolutionary masterwork, the first edition with his extensive revisions "his passionate advocacy of individualism, his trust in the fundamental goodness of man, and his opposition to all restrictions on liberty have endured" (PMM) a profound influence on Jefferson, viewed as Godwin's "American born counterpart," this work uniformly bound with the first edition of Godwin's Enquiry signed on the title page by William King, an especially memorable association set from the estate library of King, Eighth Baron King and First Earl of Lovelace, and his wife, Ada Byron Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and famed as the first computer programmer in her work with Babbage, each volume with estate library inkstamps, spines with gilt-stamped "K" monograms and "suns," in contemporary calf and marbled boards.Godwin's Political Justice, triggered by Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and a response to Montesquieu, remains "one of the earliest, the clearest, and most theoretical expositions of socialist and anarchist doctrine… his trust in the fundamental goodness of man, and his opposition to all restrictions on liberty have endured." Godwin is famed, as well, for his marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). After her tragic early death, he continued to be major influence on their daughter Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein (1818). For many of that generation Godwin, "with his revolutionary opinions… seemed almost a prophet" (PMM 243). The book's initial publication in 1793 "brought him immediate renown… Hazlitt's account of Godwin's reputation, written nearly 30 years later, captures some of the reaction… 'No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country… Tom Paine was considered for a time as Tom Fool to him'" (Mark Philp).Political Justice "remains a work of real philosophical power… as eloquent a defense of individual liberty as anything in subsequent generations of liberals, including John Stuart Mill… As the founder of philosophical anarchism, the originator of the psychological novel, and as a key figure in the British response to the French Revolution," Godwin remains vital to Western thought (ODNB). Political Justice, as well, had a profound influence on Thomas Jefferson, who had the 1796 first American edition in his library (Sowerby 2359). "Only the emigrant Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense prompted Americans to declare their independence in 1776, was a half-step ahead of Godwin" (Burstein, Jefferson's Secrets, 105).This distinctive first octavo edition of Political Justice is uniformly bound with the first edition of Godwin's Enquirer two vital works that are rarely found together. Enquirer contains 28 essays that reconceive and point back to Political Justice. Shortly after he began Enquirer in August 1796, Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin became lovers. To a great extent, "Enquirer was conceived, composed and published under the influence of his relationship with Wollstonecraft… the essays' philanthropic potential was evident in the effect they had on Mary. She read them in October 1796 and confessed they made her love Godwin 'more and more'" (Pérez Rodriguez, Education, Conversation and History, 81-82, 84n). Further, there "can be no doubt that Percy Shelley read Enquirer" as well (Hyde, Notes on Shelley's Reading, 16, 23). For many of that generation Godwin, "with his revolutionary opinions… seemed almost a prophet" (PMM 243). Enquirer achieved perhaps its greatest impact when it "incited Malthus to write his Essay on Population… Both Political Justice and Enquirer formed part of the central ar.
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