ABSTRACT
George Ticknor (1791–1871) was born in Boston and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1807, after which he went to Europe to continue his education. His first visit lasted from 1815 to 1819, during which he kept a journal recording his life and experiences. Ticknor visited Godwin several times during the spring of 1819 while doing the rounds of London literary and intellectual circles. This chapter presents an extract in which Ticknor presents a classic outsider’s view of Godwin and his friends, dismissing what he cannot comprehend. His description of Godwin as a philosopher turned tradesman uses the familiar terms of ‘anti-jacobin’ caricature, focusing largely on the dimensions of his head and its imagined contents. Ticknor’s social snobbishness, evident throughout the passage, comes to the fore when he subsequently contrasts this Godwinian gathering with the superior class of people he met regularly at Holland House.
