MS049: Dwight Goddard Papers

Dwight Goddard was born in Worcester in 1861. He graduated from WPI with a degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1881. He held responsible engineering positions at Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, Massachusetts Screw Co., Washburn & Moen Co., Goddard Machine Co., Wyman-Gordon Co., and Park Drop Forge Co., Cleveland. In 1906 he published a book of biographical essays titled Eminent Engineers. He sold an invention to the U.S. Government which was used during World War I. This apparently made him a wealthy man and allowed him to retire from industry in 1913.

He spent most of his adult life as a Buddhist and writer about Buddhism. He had received a degree from Hartford Seminary in 1894, and became a missionary in China. In China he converted to Buddhism. Goddard was married three times, and had two sons. He spent many years in Thetford, Vermont and lived a spartan life with much time spent in contemplation.

Mr. Goddard sought to interpret Buddhist teachings for the Western world. In his foreward for the 1993 edition of Mr. Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible, Robert Aitken wrote: “Students of Zen Buddhism come to me with a variety of ‘first books’ in their past and among them, with some frequency, is Dwight Goddard’s durable anthology of translations, A Buddhist Bible, first published in 1932 and then republished in its present, enlarged form in 1938.”