Coleridge and Godwin in the 1790s

Abstract

The ‘connection’ which existed between William Godwin (1756–1836) and Coleridge is arguably the main subject of their writings in the 1790s. Both men were deeply interested in the contemporary ‘Associations’ open to them to form with like-minded people, and in the relation between such fellowships and society at large. In his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), Godwin famously devised a theory entailing the dissolution of government, or any other form of social jurisdiction over private judgement, in the interests of furthering a human perfectibility which could only be realised by the anarchism of true political justice. Coleridge started producing The Watchman in 1796 in order to finance a domestic Pantisocratic ‘Association’ planned for the banks of the Susquehanna. Hypothetical communities like these turn out to be modelled on the audiences envisaged by Godwin’s and Coleridge’s writings. This follows from the stress each writer laid upon the circulation of information as indispensible to, even constitutive of, the desired social reality. Coleridge’s introductory essay to The Watchman contains a history of the ‘struggle’ for freedom of information leading up to contemporary resistance to Government censorship.