As a founder of the Nation and its first editor, holding the post from 1865 until 1899, E. L. Godkin was a central force in the growth of the magazine's prestige as a vehicle for nineteenth-century American liberalism. Under Godkin the Nation became a shaper of American political thought whose influence far surpassed what might have been expected from its small circulation.

Although he seldom acknowledged his Irish heritage and even attempted to conceal it, preferring instead to be thought of as an Englishman, Edwin Lawrence Godkin was born in County Wicklow, Ireland, on 2 October 1831, the oldest of five children and one of two sons of James and Sarah Lawrence Godkin. During his childhood the family moved frequently as his father, a Protestant minister, assumed a succession of Irish pulpits and editorial positions.

Godkin learned to read at home, and at age seven began grammar school at Armagh in northern...