• Name: Geddes, Dr Alexander
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 4  September  1737
• Death Date: 26  February  1802
• Occupation: Roman Catholic priest
• Occupation: biblical scholar

The identification has been made according to his DNB entry (abolitionist, published poetry anon in the Morning Chronicle, member of the society for constitutional reform and the Joseph Johnson circle) and from Geddes involvement in Johnson's circle.

Geddes was one of the circle of Joseph Johnston [sic], who published much of his work, and was intimate with many of the most revolutionary whigs, as well as with the most radical romantic artists, especially William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’ (DNB - see also Tyson on Johnson, A Liberal Publisher, p. 66 for a note on Geddes and the formation of JJ's circle). Godwin first records his name in 1792, as Dr Geddes – he sees him from afar at one point (at the ‘Str’ – possibly the Strand?) and reads his work on slavery, which was probably Geddes’s 1792 satirical pamphlet Apology for Slavery, an application of Paine’s principles in aid of the abolitionist cause (DNB).

Subsequently, he’s referred to as Geddes, with the exception of his death-day, which Godwin records using his title. In 1790, he is included in a Diary list of Anti-Tests and also the London French Revolution Society that Godwin marks as, simply, ‘French Revolution’. This date corresponds with Geddes’s poetic sequence Carmen seculare pro Gallica gente tyrannidi aristocraticae erepta (1790), which was ‘intended to be read in French to the assembly of deputies in Paris as an exercise in assuring the assembly of continuing international intellectual support for the revolution’ (DNB). This established Geddes as a radical whig and Foxite, according to the DNB. Many of the later meetings are not tied to a society, but take place at the home of B Hollis.

Godwin records his death.

• DNB
• Gerald P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.