Godwin, Francis (1562–1633)

English writer and prelate. He was a celebrated historian, but is chiefly remembered for his fanciful story, The Man in the Moon, published 1638. This was the first story of space flight in the English language; it was very popular and inspired Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

Godwin was born in Hannington, Northamptonshire, and educated at Oxford. He took orders and became bishop of Llandaff 1591.