Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Godkin, Edwin Lawrence

GODKIN, Edwin Lawrence, journalist, b. in Moyne, County Wicklow, Ireland, 2 Oct., 1831. His father, James, wrote a “Religious History of Ireland” (1873). The son was educated at a grammar-school near Wakefield, England, and at Queen's college, Belfast, where he was graduated in 1851. He was a correspondent of the London “News” in Turkey and Russia during the Crimean war, 1854-'6. In the autumn of 1856 he came to the United States, and in the ensuing winter made a journey on horseback through the southern states, a record of which appeared in letters to the “News.” He studied law under David Dudley Field in New York city, was admitted to the bar in 1859, practised for a few years, and then went to Europe, owing to impaired health. He returned to New York at the close of 1862, and was a correspondent of the “News” and an editorial writer for the New York “Times” until July, 1865, when he established and became editor of “The Nation,” which in 1866 passed into the hands of Mr. Godkin and two other gentlemen as proprietors. In 1881 “The Nation” was made the weekly issue of the “Evening Post,” and Mr. Godkin became one of the editors and proprietors of the joint publication. He is the author of a “History of Hungary, A. D. 300-1850” (London, 1856), and of the work on “Government” in the “American Science Series” (New York, 1871).