Ann Hull Godwin

Ann Hull Godwin (1722-1809), formerly of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, mother of William Godwin, spent her last years living near his younger brother, Philip Godwin, first at his farm at Wood Dalling, Norfolk, then later at another farm in Bradenham, Norfolk, where she died in 1809.  Godwin’s sister Hannah (1762-1817) lived in London and never married.  Godwin’s two children from his marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft were Fanny Imlay (Mary’s child by Gilbert Imlay in 1794,) and Mary (later Mary Shelley), whose birth in 1797 led to Wollstonecraft’s death.  On 21 September 1803, Eliza Gould Flower wrote to her husband, Benjamin Flower, in Cambridge, about a visit she made to Mrs. Godwin. In her letter, she mentions an adopted child by Godwin and Wollstonecraft, a child that does not appear in any account of either individual and remains a mystery. Godwin later married Mary Jane Clairmont (actually de Vial) on 21 December 1802.  She had two illegitimate children, Charles and Mary Jane, with two different men.  A son, William, was born to Godwin and his new wife on 28 March 1803.  William St.  Clair also notes the oddity of Godwin’s family situation: “In 1797 [Godwin] was a solitary bachelor.  Mary Wollstonecraft had left him with two children, and two years after meeting Mary Jane he had three more. All five were under the age of eight.  They were an unusual family. Charles Clairmont was the half-brother of Jane Clairmont who was the half-sister of William Godwin Junior who was the half-brother of Mary Godwin who was the half-sister of Fanny Imlay. Four of the five had either Godwin or Mary Jane as a natural parent, but no two of them had the same father and the same mother” (254).   See Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 12-13, 252; C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London: H. S. King, 1876), 2.91-92; William St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), 248-54; for Eliza Flower's letter, see Timothy Whelan, Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008), 275-76.