• Name: Godwin, Emily (née Mary Louisa Eldred)
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date:
• Death Date:

Emily is the wife of William Godwin junr. St Clair suggests that neither Godwin nor Mary Jane attended the wedding (5 February 1830) - whereas there is a clear reference to the church where they are married on that day, suggesting Godwin is using it as metonymic for the wedding, and implying that he (and probably Mary Jane)may have attended. Although it seems that there is only one contact between Godwin and William's wife, it seems likely that Godwin uses an abbreviation between 1830 and 1831 to refer to the couple - Ws (where there are clear indications that Ws is a plural - as in Ws sup - rather than sups; and Ws call, rather than calls). The grammar of the use strongly supports the view that this is a more than one person. Moreover, Emily clearly does appear again in the Diary after 1834 - moreover, according to Godwin's letter to Mary Jane (30 August 1834), Emily is with Mary Jane in Herne Bay. The three puzzles are that they record nothing of her in the three months immediately after the marriage; that contact seems to stop in April 1831; and that there seems no contact between then and Emily's visits in 1834 (with William junr dying on 8 September 1832). One possibility in the first period is that Godwin simply subsumes Emily under the W entries, but we have left them coded for William sole. Another is that Godwin simply does not register their contact. The Ws entries have been coded as both William and Emily. It is notable that the Ws entries are closely linked to MWS and Julia, another close friend of Mary Wollstonecraft-Shelley. Moreover, the circumstances in which they meet are predominantly intimate and domestic.

• MS. Abinger c. 43, fols. 39-40: [29]-30 Aug. [1834]
• St Clair, p. 477.

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