ABSTRACT
William Dunlap (1766–1839) was born in New Jersey and pursued several different careers in the course of his life. He studied painting in London from 1784 to 1787, but on his return to America began writing plays, achieving the first of many successes with The Father; or, American Shandyism: A Comedy (1789). Though Dunlap never met Godwin, he was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings, and in late 1795 he wrote to Godwin praising the first edition of Political Justice and proposing to edit the second for publication in America. Dunlap was also the author of Memoirs of Charles Brockden Brown, the American Novelist (1815), the primary source of biographical information concerning Godwin’s leading American fictional disciple. This chapter presents a passage that describes the first of two recorded meetings between Godwin and Cooke, who were both invited to supper by Cooper in May 1803.
