William Godwin
"Mounseer Nongtongpaw" was first attributed to the ten-and-a-half-year-old Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) in "A Nursery Companion" (1980) by Peter and Iona Opie. Don Locke supported this view in his biography of William Godwin, Mary's father, that same year. The attribution rested on a 1960 advertisement by a book dealer, which printed part of a 2 January 1808 letter from William Godwin to an unknown correspondent: