One of the great polemics and the foundational anarchist text, Godwin's Enquiry is his major work of political philosophy. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice established William Godwin as the leading exponent of British radicalism, in the tradition of the French Revolution. In it, he criticizes the 'brute engine' of government for systematizing the oppression of individual liberty in the name of law and order, and calls for the abolition of all forms of rule and the establishment of an anarchist society based on the principles of simplicity, sincerity, and equality.

His book influenced everyone from Shelley and Coleridge (who revered him) to Thomas Malthus (who wrote his Essay on the Principle of Population in outraged response to him). The ideas in the book would later echo through the writings of thinkers as diverse as Proudhon, Kropotkin, Marx, and Thoreau, and it remains one of the great polemics of political literature.

William Godwin, the famous philosopher and novelist, was born in East Anglia in 1756. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was educated to follow in his father's footsteps but subsequently lost his faith in God. He then dedicated himself to writing, expressing his Enlightenment and anarchist ideals in novels and essays. In 1797, he married Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist; their daughter would grow up to be Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Godwin died in 1836.

Isaac Kramnick is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1972. He has written or edited approximately twenty books, including his *Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole*, which won the Conference of British Studies Prize for the best book on British politics.

Pages: 800, Dimensions: 13.1x13.1cm