That the handsome, clever, managing Mrs. Godwin had great influence over her husband, is shown by the way in which she induced him to become a publisher and retail seller of children’s educational books,--the business being so arranged that she was for some time its nominal and actual manager, whilst he, keeping in the background of the affair, avoided public observation. Knowing much of printing and the book-trade, it occurred to the managing lady that she and her husband would do well to go into this business. There was much to be said in favour of the project in 1805, when in the fourth year of their married life, Mr. and Mrs. Godwin were no richer than they had been on their wedding-day. Still earning an income that would have been wealth to him as a bachelor, Godwin had not ‘done well’ of late years. Since his second marriage things had been going ill with him. His income was waning, his family had increased. Fanny was rising twelve; Charley was ten; Jane (_i.e._ Claire) and Mary were rising eight; Willie, the babe of the household, was nearing the end of his second year. How were these children to be clothed, fed, taught, and raised creditably into young men and women, on an income that, already barely sufficient for present necessities, seemed likely to dwindle to smaller revenue? With all their industry, Godwin and his wife had barely kept things going; and they were now nearing a time of life (Godwin was in his fiftieth year), when even the most improvident people begin to anticipate the usual incidents of life’s decline. Under these circumstances, the shop was opened in 1805, in Hanway Street, Oxford Street, under the name of M. J. Godwin and Co.; the M. J. Godwin being Mary Jane, whose Co. at The Polygon, and on the shop-front, went to work bravely in throwing off copy for new Children’s Books, to be published under the _nom-de-plume_ of Baldwin. Mrs. Godwin also worked hard with her pen, whilst she went daily from The Polygon to the little shop near Oxford Street, to look after the person who had been engaged to wait on customers; Godwin keeping in the background, because his reputation might be hurtful to the venture, were the shop known to be his shop, and many of the books sold in it known to be by his pen. Something less than two years later, when the business (which, beginning in this modest way, became a considerable affair) was moved to Skinner Street, it was decided with questionable discretion that Godwin should live over his own shop, and, dropping all concealment, work the business under his own name. The business was thus removed to Skinner Street in May, 1807.