Unconventional calling

This is a paper about a quintessential mode of sociability in radical circles in the 1790s–visiting and calling on friends and acquaintance, primarily in each other’s homes. It centres on William Godwin (1756-1836), philosopher, novelist and literary figure, husband of the now more famous Mary Wollstonecraft and thereby father to the still more famous Mary Shelley. Godwin rose to public prominence in the opening years of the French Revolution with his magnum opus, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), but his career was a major casualty of the backlash against radicalism after 1798.Godwin made and received a lot of visits–hundreds each year. Although scholars have often referred to his carefully kept Diary their use of it has been relatively impressionistic. In this chapter I want to explore more systematically some of the complexities of domestic visiting, drawing on the digital edition of Godwin’s diary