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had never occurred to me as possible that my person . . . could
     suffer such ignominious violation.” After his schooling, William returned to Guestwick, where he worked as an assistant schoolteacher
     until his father’s death in 1772.
    John Godwin’s death was a liberation. William’s mother, conscious of her son’s intellectual gifts, took him to London to the
     Hoxton Academy. Hoxton was a rigorous college—far more rigorous than Oxford and Cambridge at the time. (As a Dissenter, Godwin
     was not able to attend those prestigious schools, which were for Anglicans only.) Lectures started at six or seven in the
     morning and included classics, theology, and Greek philosophy; students learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew along with smatterings
     of French, Italian, and German. Most important, for the first time in his life, Godwin was exposed to honest, passionate debate.
    Though he did well academically, he was not happy at Hoxton. He had an intense desire to be liked by others, yet had little
     ability in the art of making himself popular. He later noted ruefully that the schoolmaster and other pupils thought him “the
     most self-conceited, self-sufficient animal that ever lived.” Though he began what would be a lifelong friendship with a boy
     named James Marshall, Godwin felt a strong sense of loneliness. It would stay with him throughout his life, be a recurrent
     theme in his novels, and would be passed on to his daughter Mary.
    When, after five years, Godwin left Hoxton, he still wanted to be a preacher even though he had now developed many other interests
     and his religious views had broadened. Then only twenty-two, he obtained his first job as a temporary minister in the town
     of Ware, near his birthplace, but problems soon developed. Though Godwin had not yet been formally ordained, he felt entitled
     to perform the communion service, because he had the consent of his congregation. It sounds like a minor issue, but other
     ministers in the county took umbrage and refused to use the title of Reverend in addressing him. Four congregations rejected
     him in four years. Godwin tried to open a seminary, but failed to attract students. He would never become formally ordained.
    As Godwin’s failures as a minister increased, he found his faith starting to waver as well. During this time, Godwin had started
     to read the works of the
philosophes
—the same thinkers who influenced his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft. Rousseau’s effect on Godwin was to make him realize
     that religion and superstition could not stand the test of reason. It was a profound shock to the young man’s worldview. At
     first he shifted from Calvinism to Deism, but would in time become an atheist.
    Bereft of the only sure force that had guided his life, he settled in London in 1782 and began his career as a writer, joining
     a part of the English literary world known as “Grub Street,” which published cheap novels, books of poetry, and nonfiction.
     Godwin had to produce copy quickly and in great quantity. “In the latter part of 1783,” he recalled, “I wrote in ten days
     a novel entitled
Damon and Delia,
for which Hookham gave me five guineas, and a novel in three weeks called
Italian Letters,
purchased by Robinson for twenty guineas, and in the first four months of 1784 a novel called
Imogen, A Pastoral Romance,
for which Lane gave me ten pounds.”
Imogen
was a spoof of
The Poems of Ossian,
a bestseller of the day that was supposed to be ancient Celtic lore, but was in reality a fake. Godwin’s parody was spicy,
     including rape, a lecherous magician, and other highly un-Christian elements, although virtue did triumph in the end. He also
     wrote reviews for John Murray’s
English Review,
a monthly that favored radical political positions. Publications called “reviews” were abundant in those days; they were
     often little more than collections of puff pieces used to push the newest books. (Murray was a book publisher as